Love and the temporary arrangement

[Lysana McMillan]

Beeflin noted in class today that a well-trained Companion "can find a place in their hearts for everyone they encounter." I felt a resonance there with how I already love. When I applied to the Guild, I made a comment about how I've spent a fair amount of my SL time looking for love in a lot of places and sometimes finding it. That's been my basic pattern for for most of my eight years on the grid. Some have stayed around longer than others, and many of them have ended in different ways. Each of them has retained a place in my heart.

I'm hoping that further learning and development with the Guild will refine that process for me. I sometimes think I'm a bit too sloppy about it right now. But I should probably not expect the impossible. Or is it at all plausible to believe that one may love freely and let go freely without feeling the pain of separation? Thus far, I've considered that pain the price of admission, if you will, to deeper joys than I'd achieve otherwise. But is attachment part of why that pain exists? Or is there something else I'm missing?

[Beeflin Grut]

I find the more widely I love the less pain I suffer. And the less I suffer, the deeper and wiser love I can offer.

[Lysana McMillan]

A quote just came to me while reading your comment. "Shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased. Thus do we refute entropy." - Spider Robinson The pain can't go away, as separation is rarely comfortable. But the logic carries.

[Beeflin Grut]

:-)

[Persephone Emerald]

I think I'm in a similar place myself. That's wise comment by Beeflin and an interesting idea to think about.

Maybe our society teaches us that Love is limited the way time, money & energy are, but Love isn't like these other things. I also thought of the 3 levels of love Beeflin mentioned in his gestures class, & wondered if I love at a higher level than most do?  When we enjoy another's company, it makes sense that we then miss them when they're not around. When we care about another's welfare and happiness, it makes sense that we feel pain at not being able to help them. When we feel love and longing for them, it makes sense that we feel pain when we think they don't feel the same for us. It seems then as if pain is practically the other side of the coin of Love. We do seem to pay for love with pain, but it is the imbalance we sense that hurts, not the love we give them, nor the love they give us.

When we love many, this pain is lessened. Maybe because the pain is diffused, while more people give us love back? We have less time to dwell on feelings of longing, because we're enjoying the company of someone else. Yet we don't stop loving the one who is absent. We love them just as much, and we don't have as many feelings of resentment for them not being around.

[Beeflin Grut]

Yes Persephone, I think that when we miss someone our minds start to imagine stuff about them and this makes us crazy. If we're always busy loving and looking after others there's no time for that craziness and when we see the absent person again we can be pleased to see them afresh.