“No fear have ye of evil curses, says you. Properly warned ye be, says I.”

What stops us from loving, from reaching out to people, from jumping in with both feet?

I believe it’s fear, but not exactly the fear of a broken heart. It’s the immature fear of not being able to possess something entirely.

And why should we fear that?

Do we go to a movie and hope it’s not very good?
We’d miss the entertainment of the hours we were there and the waste the money we spent!

Do we not buy a book because we can see it has a finite number of pages?
We’d never gain the experience the story!

Do we cry and shake an angry fist at an amusement park because it is closing and the day has come to an end?
We would ruin the day of excitement for ourselves and those around us.

Only a child would act this way because he hasn’t learned that all things come to an end, that to love is to lose, that we have the experiences not to keep them but to remember them.

Then why do we behave this way in our relationships with other people?

Why do we go out to meet people and not embrace who they are, get to know them and see if they are good friend material?

Why do we not jump into a new relationship with both feet and enjoy the moment?

And why do we throw a fit when a relationship finally ends, whether it was a long-term friendship or short term lover?

What if we didn’t?

What if we looked at the people around us as free and independent people that we might get the chance to spend time with, be that positive or negative, instead of objects to be possessed and kept like fine art collection?

What if we went into every relationship with every other human being knowing that our time together is finite, like a wonderful book, and that the point of reading it is to experience it and remember it forever?