"In every living thing there is the desire to love and be loved in return and the strongest and most lasting of all love is the love which is not afraid to show its vulnerability and demonstrate its fragility. When we love, we reflect the best we have to offer and can more readily recognise oneself in another.
Finding love is nothing less than life's treasure chest revealing its dearest contents. I learned very early on in my life that without having someone or something to love in this world, that nothing seems to make sense or is born of purpose. Knowing that you are loved by someone gives you constant strength to do all that requires doing, while loving another gives you the courage to face all that life brings your way.
Love is often best when it lands on you unexpectedly from someone whom you never considered friend or close companion. When I first met my wife Sheila, I neither found her attractive of face nor saw in her the woman with whom I would gladly spend the rest of my life. For her part, though she found me interesting, she was naturally concerned about the 14 year age gap between us, especially as she had found herself widowed in her early 50s. We can honestly say that it wasn't love at first sight, though there was a strange sense of feeling that touched both of us which wouldn't let go when we parted. Only one day apart from that first meeting between us, and each knew that we had met someone whom stirred our emotions in such manner that they would never settle again until we next met.
Unknown to each of us during that first meeting, we secretly fell in love and we both smiled because we knew it to be so. We inwardly knew that love heals the broken bark of all past hurt and bruised emotions. We instinctively knew that love is brave and when you love back, it is also beautiful. It was the rarest of feelings we had ever known; it was love in the making and it happened in Haworth on December 15th, 2010. We suspended all doubt and placed our faith on a higher plane that neither of us had previously dared to reach out for. We dared to love a love that was more than love; we dared to live a life full of love, of physical, emotional and spiritual dimension which offers much more satisfaction than any creature needs to feel fulfilled.
It was in that moment that I realised that love never happens in an instant; that cupid never strikes within that first exchange of glance. Love creeps up on you when your emotions are least guarded and turns your life upside down before you know it's happened. It warms all waking moments, lightens the heaviest of potential problems, it opens wide your capacity to dream and makes all manner of things possible that you previously thought impossible. You start to feel what it's like to walk on clouds and you begin to see colours and shades of personality and positivism which outshine any rainbow hitherto seen.
But the greatest of love always brings with it a sweet agony; the time when the physical presence of your sweetheart departs this life before you and leaves you with nought but happy times of reflection and fond memories to keep your affections warm in the coldness of winter. It is at this time when you least care about the present that the spiritual dimension of the love you shared with your dearly departed gives you sustenance for the future and the prospect of eternal reunion with your soul mate." William Forde: January 8th, 2016.