lonegardener said:Such as? 🤷
We keep growing and growing... but for what? Just to be "successful" once we're in the grave? What's the actual point?
Like what, exactly? 🤷
Grow, grow, grow... just so we can be "big shots" by the time we hit the grave? What’s the point?[/I]
In that second sentence, > was actually talking about the relationship itself—that high-quality bond that needs constant nurturing, attention, and care if you want it to stay alive.
When they say love makes us "grow," they mean it leads to a fulfilled life. I'm talking about a life filled with genuine satisfaction and a harmonious vibe toward yourself and everyone else. You should look at "growth" more as a state of awareness where you're making conscious, daily choices that benefit both you and those around you, making every single moment count. Some people call this "living mindfully." Once you finally wrap your head around how things work, it's all about taking action. Without that practice, you can't even enjoy a tiny fraction of what you've learned. That "awareness" is the absolute key. When we are finally ready to step up and act for our own good, then we can truly say we love ourselves. But man, it is so hard to snap out of that everyday lethargy, laziness, and lack of motivation. There are so many moving parts to getting what you want, and usually, only the person involved can actually spot them, so everyone else's attempts to help are mostly useless.
Sure, it's easy to "grow" when life knocks you down a peg or when you make a conscious choice to be better for one weekend or one hour. But trying to maintain that kind of momentum every single day—creating a literal perpetual motion machine of positive action—is basically the peak of human achievement. So, "growing" isn't about walking a path to reach some destination; it's about growing so that you actually experience the journey at every single step.
At that point, you might as well take that idea from > about "living in expanding circles" and tattoo it on your butt, because we are the ones who decide whether this natural mechanism works for us or against us.
Regarding love being a process versus a memory: the connection between two people can definitely be a process, while the memory of someone is just the aftermath of that relationship. But love itself only lives as long as it's being given or received. It doesn't exist because of the giver or the receiver; it exists because of its own essence.
Everything else is just a byproduct or an expression of it. And honestly? People express it wrong all the time, and they interpret it wrong all the time. That's why you hear all this talk about suffering, or how people mix it up with possessiveness, or identify too much with the relationship, or mistake it for dependency. Most of all, people kill it by obsessing over the past or the future, even though love only knows the present. I often find myself wondering what everyone is waiting for, because the "now" is literally happening right this second. Then I remember that some people are just fundamentally wired wrong. They think they're going to walk into a gym once and suddenly have massive biceps.
Sorry if I'm rambling here; I don't even know where I'm going with this myself right now.