Relationships

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 - in freedom, in the sense that the dancers are free, barely touching as they pass, but partners in the same pattern.

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 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. Relationships 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, and continually visited and abandoned by the tides.

excerpt from 'A Gift From the Sea'

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001)

At the end of the day we all form relationships - be it as friends, lovers, acquaintances, parents, siblings - the intensities and purposes will vary. I have begun to accept that people come into your life for various reasons. They all play their part, and so do I. Found the above from Anne Morrow Lindbergh via a friend's blog. Made me think. Made me smile. It' s ok to let things ebb.