"Here is a strange paradox. Woman instinctively wants to give, yet resents giving herself in small pieces. I believe that what woman resents is not so much giving herself in pieces as giving herself purposelessly. Purposeful giving is not as apt to deplete one's resources; it belongs to the natural order of giving that seems to renew itself even in the act of depletion."
This quote if from the book "Gift from the Sea" by Ann Morrow Lindberg (page 46). It takes me back to the importance of pondering and meditating. . . to decide in our mind what matters most to us and then focus our best energy on that, instead of living automatically and wearing ourselves out trying to do it all. It ties right into Elder Oak's conference talk "Good, Better, & Best" from the October 07 Conference.
Hungry for more?
"When each partner loves so completely that he has forgotten to ask himself whether or not he is loved in return; when he only knows that he loves and is moving to its music- then, and then only, are two people able to dance perfectly in tune to the same rhythm. " (p. 106)
"The spirit alternates between total vision and absolute blindness. Here is a man, for example, who loves his farm- but there are moments when he sees in it only a collection of unrelated objects. Here is a man who loves his wife- but there are moments when he sees in love nothing but burdens, hindrances, constraints. Here is a man who loves music- but there are moments when it cannot reach him."
"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 the tide 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. The only real security is not in 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 in nostalgia, nor forward to what it might be in dread or anticipation, but living in the present relationship and accepting it as it is now." (p. 108)
