lessons from the great thinkers: session 1

me: Thinkers, what exactly does love entail?

Robert Heinlein: "Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. "

me: Is it truly possible to love in a short amount of time?

Khalil Gibran: It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations

me: If love is real, what is it that keeps certain people from expressing this feeling to one other?

Tim Allen in I'm Not Really Here : "Fear gets in the way of love, and I've discovered that fear, and not hate, is the opposite of love. Think about it: Love and hate are closely bound emotions, but cousins, not enemies. It's fear that kills love. It's fear we feel when love is threatened."

me: Perhaps this fear was instilled due to a mistake. Can the one i hurt ever forgive me?

Laurence Sterne: Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.

me: I have suffered greatly because of my mistakes. Why does my suffering overcome my whole being?

Aeschylus: There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

Hannah Arendt: Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would, as it were, be confined to a single
deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice, who lacked the magic formula to break the spell.

me: Thank you, great ones. The wisdom bestowed upon me gives me even more to ponder, and in these thoughts i find slight therapy.