“When we feel love and kindness toward others, it not only makes others feel loved and cared for, but it helps us also to develop inner happiness and peace.” – H.H. The Dalai Lama

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.” – Oscar Wilde

“Love is a condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” – Robert Heinlein

What is it I miss most about being in love?
What is it I miss about loving another and having that love returned?
What is it that is missing from my life?

I consider myself a very fortunate woman. I have at various points in my life had everything I would ever need in this lifetime. I have had money, privilege, family, friends, happiness, health and so much more. Complaining about my life would be a lie for the most part. I have had a pretty good life despite a few tests of my soul and my character and my strength of will to live.

I have been talking with a friend lately. Someone I like. Someone with whom I have found similar thoughts and feelings as I. The intimate conversations mostly only women can have. Generally because women feel and experience life in a way that is deeper and more colorful of emotion. Tis a generalization that largely but not always holds true throughout the human condition.

We have been discussing the things we as single women miss about being in a relationship with someone we really care about. The simple things are never lost over time. They dance around us like moon fairies on the water at night. Seen, adored and always out of reach. The soft kisses early in the morning as you wake. The supportive embrace upon returning home from a bad day at work. Holding hands on the beach as the sun sets over the ocean. Reaching across the table at a cafe gently placing a hand on a cheek to feel the warmth of love radiating into your hand. Lasting gazes across the room at a party where the conversations turn to a melody of sounds without words. Spooning, cuddling and just being together.

I have had all these things in my life at one point. Now that they are gone I realize how important and wonderful they are. I am confident I will have them again. I am a woman of deep emotion, intense passion and devoted love. But all this means nothing with no one to share it with.

Some of us by nature are better when committed. We are complete and fulfilled by the presence of another in our lives. Loneliness is not a pleasant situation. It affords us too much time too think about what it is we are missing. I am also a Pisces which compounds the ache of an empty spot in my heart.

Not only do I miss the gift of love and a partner’s caring touch. I miss giving of myself. Feeling complete is not all about filling your vessel. It is as much about filling the vessel of another with your heart and soul. This world would benefit from more giving like this. I know because I have been there. The feeling of confidence, power and love that comes with giving unconditionally of yourself to another and not only seeing the light brighten in your partner but feeling the warmth of their inner light radiating back into your soul.

The secret to happiness is knowing what to feed your heart and how to nurture its growth. There are no things of man that can provide this most basic of needs. It is love. The only true fuel to ignite the fires within yourself and others is love. Without it loneliness serves only to cool and smother the fire within.

Talking about this with my friend has really opened many windows into my past. Not so much the woman I was once in love with but what we had for a time. When that dies something dies inside of us. But the memory of it does not fade like other memories do. I think this is because when something touches the deepest part of your being as love can do, it engraves a permanent mark on your being, your sense of self. Take it away and part of you is gone. The parts that remain are what your partner gave you that cannot be returned. Of all those things the feeling of life in a state of utter completeness and the memory of love.

In a way I am not a whole person. My other half is out there. When we do come together, magic will restore the imbalance in my heart. I used to believe in soul mates. Maybe I still do. I do still believe in love. I do believe there is more than one person in this world with a matching love of life and compatible soul where giving our selves too each other will ignite a blaze lying dormant within.

It seems we are rolling into a season where giving should hold more meaning and purpose. In these very difficult times we are now enduring, love is more important than ever. For some it is all they have left. For some it is all they would need to get them through another day. For some it is the breath of life.

I may find someone to share my life with again soon. I may not. The same is true for everyone. But one thing I do have is the ability love many people on many different levels. And I give it freely. That does not fulfill the same giving as giving to a partner. But it still feels good.

I wish you all love and happiness.