Quote of the Day

I’m not usually the “quote” type of person (I also don’t forward “hilarious” chain emails.  It is one of my best qualities), but I ran across this today while cleaning out my overstuffed Ideas folder … and I thought it was pretty dead on.  I’m not sure exactly why human beings expect to feel identically about their friends & lovers at every single moment, but perhaps the first step to combating this (and thus, the disappointment that arises when we’re surprised by the natural ups and downs of our emotions, and those of our companions) is to simply realize it and accept it, and see how we feel the next day.

“When you love someone, you do not love them all the time in exactly the same way, from moment to moment.  It is an impossibility.  It is even a lie to pretend to.  And yet, this is exactly what most of us demand.  We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships.  We leap at the flow of time and resist in terror its ebb.  We are afraid it will never return.  We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity in freedom.  The only real security is not owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even.  Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.  For relationships, too, must be like islands.  One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continuously visited and abandoned by the tides.  Once must accept the serenity of the winged life, ebb and flow, of intermittency.”
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh