"At the end of the day, a couple can only look back on what they had in their relationship. When all of the water has been drained from the cooking pot of life, it is pointless looking for something in the bottom of the pot that was never there in the first place. A love that has lasted a full lifetime of marriage is a love that never dies. Even when the couple lies together beneath the ground, the love they gave to one another in life continues to be given to others as their offspring and family pass it around in their name.
There are many stages in the development of love, like the throes of passion in young love to those warm feelings of gentle pleasure and satisfying companionship in a more mature love. Whether loving couples be young or old, the process remains the same. Love is the condition which your happiness cannot be untangled from the happiness of another. Just as their happiness is essential to yours, so it is with theirs.
I always find it a bit strange whenever I hear of any person who proclaims not to have found love in their life. Love is the only possible answer to our existence.We all come from love; indeed we are created as the very embodiment of love. Hence there is no reason ever to search for it beyond oneself. Love exists within us all, just waiting to be expressed.
I have never understood the sensible approach to love, as its very definition defies all logic. When love hits, it is like a collision of emotions; it is an ocean of ambitious dreams that never before seemed possible when you were on your own. You soon start to understand that being in love has absolutely nothing to do with reason and everything to do with your strength of feelings. I suspect that people who try to be sensible about love are either incapable of it or will never fully experience it. Love is a maze of mixed emotions; it is a mantra of madness where the couple in love cannot hear 'I love you' spoken too many times. It is a poetry of the senses that makes no rhyme or reason to the onlooker and even less to the person in love.
I have always been an old romantic, even from the early years of my teens, and if I am truthful, I would have to admit that I like being in love. Indeed, I'd even go so far as to say that I need to be in love. I need to be in love with life, and with someone special who's smile alone is sufficient to make this world of love turn upon its axis. In fact, I'd have to say that I have never felt more alive than those times in life when I have been in love; never felt so willingly lost. I knew that I was lost in love when I sensed there was no return. I immediately decided that even if there was, I wouldn't want to find my way back.
So you lovers of old, who still love your partner today, or perhaps even more than ever before, as you enter the twilight period of your lives, hold on tight to each other and learn to treasure each precious moment remaining. For when your loving partner is taken out to sea, leaving you alone on the shore; when your sun has set, no amount of church candles or photo albums will ever replace that warm glow of their daily presence in your life. Then, only fond memories of the sand between one's toes will remain." William Forde: December 20th, 2016.