Wednesday, 16 February 2011

The Difference Between Love and Romance: Grown Up Love

"Love is the one power that awakens the ego to the existence of something outside itself, outside its empire, outside its security."

Love, in other words, is transcending the ego to connect with another.

Johnson writes: "The task of salvaging love from the swamps of romance begins with a shift of vision—. Real relatedness between two people is experienced in the small tasks they do together: the quiet conversation when the day's upheavals are at rest, the soft word of understanding, the daily companionship, the encouragement offered in a difficult moment, the small gift when least expected, the spontaneous gesture of love."

We have conceptual differences. We are conceptual differences. But isn't that where love begins, in the difference—the otherness—that makes love possible, and necessary?

As Robert Heinlein told us in his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land: "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own."

From http://www.oprah.com/relationships/The-Difference-Between-Love-and-Romance/2

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