To love someone is to see the face of God
Victor Hugo
Some truths are so close at hand that we don’t even notice them, so obvious that they are invisible. Some truths are so universally present that they seem to be nowhere at all. Such is the meaning of life:
We are born, we love, and we die.
That’s it. There is literally nothing else but love. The world is merely love’s outer appearance, its playground, the space for its realisation.
There is nothing else that is happening from the moment we open our eyes at birth, to the moment we close our eyes at death.
All of life flows from love because love is its inner energy, its inner force, the soul itself. If the soul is who we are, the essence of what we are made of, then surely the soul is love. A body without a soul is not alive. A body without love cannot live.
Everything we do is derived from love, built upon love, stimulated or inspired by love, energised or motivated by love.
Every time you do your daily chore, brush your teeth, clean your kitchen, make a cup of tea, or walk your dog, you do it, in one way or another, for love. Every euro you earn, every customer you serve, every house you build, every bread you bake, every hour you work, every mile you walk, every gesture, every glance, every smile, every emotion, can be traced back to love.
And in the same way, every moment of darkness, every experience of sadness, every moment of anger, jealousy, disappointment or resentment can be traced back to love.
Every act of unkindness, of carelessness, of neglect or abuse, even the most heinous crime is caused by love not given, love not received, love not understood, love not acknowledged.
Still, if love is the source of everything, it is not its own source. It does not come from nothing. It does not appear spontaneously.
Indeed, we cannot know when it will appear, whether or how it will appear. No amount of willpower can cause it. No rational calculation can ever bring it.
More remarkable still, no amount of might will let us stop it when it comes.
Love cannot be ‘had’. Love cannot be caused or kept. It cannot be bought or sold, exchanged or bartered for. It can be neither demanded nor imposed.
We can neither plan on love nor plan for it. It comes, when it comes, only as a surprise. we cannot look for it, for we do not even understand what it is until after it has touched us.
In short, we are powerless in the face of love, utterly subjugated to it. Save, that is, one essential liberty: We can chose, or choose not, to surrender to it.
Love is the one thing in the universe that is not the object, the product, the consequence of something else. It is at the service of nothing. We, on the other hand, are love’s servants. We live for it, in it, through it. It is not difficult to see that the great lords of our world, masters of men and women, wealthy, self-assured, sovereign and proud, are themselves ultimately servants of love.
All logics, all arguments, all reasoning over love fail to take hand of it. Love is self-sufficient, self-creating and self-reproducing.
In short, love is nothing more or less than another name for the divine, the soul that lives in all of us, the energy that causes the planets to turn and our hearts to beat. It’s what makes life live.
The meaning of life leads to the simplicity of happiness.
Happiness is the realisation that the soul is love. And since all beings are endowed with a soul, all beings are by nature made to love.
The purpose of life and the cause of happiness are therefore the same: to realise that the goal of all souls is to love. All souls, some more aware of it than others, are alike in this aspiration: To see others as soul-beings, as naturally made to love, and thus, like us, travelling on a path towards loving purely and selflessly, by surrendering to the love living in their own hearts.