by Daisaku Ikeda
Afterword by me
If you are going to fall in love, try to make your relationship one that generates great spiritual creativity, one that is mutually enriching.
Even married people were once strangers. Therefore, without patience and the effort to understand one another, things are likely not to go well. We need patience in order to become happy.
There are many who dream about experiencing happiness without the patience. But that is a dream. And a dream is just that--a dream, a fairy tale. It is to wish for a childish, easy life. This illusion breaks up many marriages. The pursuit of such happiness can only make one miserable.
It is important to make the effort to calmly construct something together. From there, real love develops. Real marriage is when you have been married for twenty-five years and feel an even deeper love than you did when you first met. Love deepens. Love that does not is merely on the level of simple likes and dislikes.
True love should be transformative, a process that amplifies our capacity to cherish not just one person but all people. It can make us stronger, lift us higher and deepen us as individuals. Only to the extent that one polishes oneself now can one hope to develop wonderful bonds of the heart in the future.
Ideal love is fostered only between two sincere, mature and independent people. It is the inner struggle to polish these attributes that is the key. ... Real love is not two people clinging to each other; it can only be fostered between two strong people secure in their individuality.
The important thing is to overcome the sorrow that accompanies any type of separation, such as death or divorce. The vital thing is to continue advancing. Do not look back. Just forge on. There are many reasons why people bid farewell to one another. People have their own thoughts and situations. The deep scars within your heart may not heal quickly. Yet brace yourself so you can look forward. You should strive to move on, cutting through the clouds in your heart. As long as you advance, new hope will be born. The sun will rise. Only when you continue to advance can you encounter an even better, more wonderful you.
We can lose ourselves in romantic attachment, but the truth is, the euphoria is unlikely to last for long. Indeed, the likelihood of undergoing suffering and sadness only grows over time. As long as we remain unable to redress our own weaknesses, we will be miserable no matter where or to whom we may take flight. We can never become truly happy unless we ourselves undergo a personal transformation.
Daily life can seem all too drab and unexciting. Living itself can sometimes seem a strain, and few of us realistically expect what joy we feel to last forever. But when we fall in love, life seems filled with drama and excitement. We feel like the leading character in a novel. But, if you get lost in love just because you are bored, and consequently veer from the path you should be following, then love is nothing more than escapism. What you are doing is retreating into a dream world, believing that what is only an illusion is actually real.If you are neglecting things you should be doing, forgetting your purpose in life because of the relationship you're in, then you're on the wrong path. A healthy relationship is one in which two people encourage each other to reach their respective goals while sharing each other's hopes and dreams. A relationship should be a source of inspiration, invigoration and hope.
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The paragraphs in bold are the parts I particularly loved but the entire passage is full of insight that I felt compelled to repost it here for the benefit of those who still bother reading my blog. A lot of the things mentioned here are concepts most of us are already familiar with, but what of these do we really live by? We know they're true and sadly, this is only realized after a particularly bad heartbreak. When a relationship ends, we ponder on our mistakes and vow to never make the same ones again..only to have history repeat itself.
We keep telling ourselves we know better but somehow find ourselves
repeating everything we vowed not to do.
In my case however, I fear my last encounter with love and marriage has left me devoid of emotion. The people around me have praised my strength and resilience after such an experience and I do, too. I only wonder if having such a gift will continue to serve as an advantage. Not being able to feel contempt or even joy that's usually found in a new love does somewhat disturb me. I welcome the idea of being
that kind of happy again but feel no desire to pursue it.
I can keep asking myself whether I am jaded or simply not ready. My days have been so full of the routines of modern daily living that I can't even find anything to share in this blog that I used to fill with the most mundane events.
It's so easy to get lost in what you have to do that you forget about what you want to do.
"Begin with the end in mind."
This is a phrase I constantly heard from a former boss. She would use this as a guide to achieve goals and was mostly used in the context of business planning and management. But I have taken this phrase to apply with everything in life. As I previously mentioned, this is something I know, but do not necessarily live by, which is a shame. I keep telling myself I have all the time in the world but when will I really start living up to my end goal in life? When will you? No matter how much of a rock I may seem to most people, I do dream of a quiet life with a family, a house, the dog (or cat). I don't want to be 50 years old when my child enters grade school but when I look at my life now, I feel it's somewhat inevitable. I am no where close to that idea of myself. I feel I haven't even begun to work up to it.
All this self-reflection is starting to seem like a plan to throw it out to the universe so that I can finally have the motivation to start. There are things that happen to you, but your life is what you make it to be. So a note to self: START...SOON :)
