Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, especially those who feel they are doing most of the loving and less of the getting loved in a relationship.  You feel a failure?  Well, what if success is not quid pro quo, or efficiency of giving and getting in equal measure?  In the more spiritual realm, the wisdom figures might say that love is successful when it is magnanimous.  I find this in Jesus on the cross for instance.  The efficiency  experts would say he is a failure.  He gave all and got nothing.  But spiritual wisdom says love is the act where we have the outrageous courage to give away our best knowing that not all of it will bear fruit.  This would be the action of the perfect lover to which we might aspire to be.  So if you give your all to someone, like your child for instance, or your partner, some fruit will quietly grow, maybe long after you have planted the seeds.  Like the parable of the sower, some seed falls on rocky ground, or thorny ground.  Eventually, people may begin to clear the rocks and thorns, all because they were once loved magnanimously.  The Buddhist Adepts refuse Nirvana, so that they can stay around to help other sentient beings.  Wisdom seems to be in the giving.