Feeling the Love
Perhaps they are complementary facets of consciousness. They are just similar enough, and, simultaneously, just different enough that they can enjoy and comfort one another, and also challenge and learn from each other optimally.
It’s a beautiful blend, really. Your world is the perfect combination of similar and different from mine that I want to explore it. You draw me into this venture naturally. Suddenly I’m finding myself observing, thinking about, and maybe even seeking out and liking things I didn’t pay much mind to before. Enter what we may call the Rocket of Growth. You shuttle me to explorations unknown.
I am coming to love using the phrase enamored with. I am rather enamored with it.
In a talk at Google about work-life balance, a speaker (whose name I don't remember...) used it in describing his meeting with a young man at a baseball game. He said, “I took a picture with him… I was just so enamored with this young man—he was just so vibrant and such a powerful force of life.”
At first it sounded a bit weird, but then I thought, Wow! I know exactly what he means and that’s awesome! That’s how I feel about this person and this person…
For me, the phrase in love with doesn’t necessarily imply physical attraction. Wayne Dyer defines being in love as, “Going within yourself to the place that is love (with another person).” I love that. :)
When I am enamored with a particular person, I feel a surge of love centered in my heart. I must say, people don’t make all this talk about their hearts for no reason. It truly is the base of love- or, perhaps, the cup, or the outlet, or the circuit.
I really am trying to observe a physical phenomenon here-- what I feel is happening in my body. I would like to imagine that others would have a similar experience, considering that, for instance, just about everyone knows the meaning of “butterflies in your stomach” (also associated with love, though perhaps that is love alternated with fear).
Anywho, saying that you are enamored with or even in love with a person again does not mean that you are physically attracted to them or really want to touch them at all (although there’s a good chance you’ll want to snuggle with them or give them a big ol’ hug). What it does mean is that you feel drawn to this person: you want to spend time with them, talk to them, and let them express their feelings. You want to understand this person and see her for who she is; and, chances are that you will want to tell them how wonderful they are.
You aren’t necessarily blind to “character flaws” or actions you generally wouldn’t approve of; but, those things become less important. You could still help the person to see, understand, and change these if a call for such change was made.
Yet, while it might be nice if that one nagging quality was absent, you love the whole person you see here. In fact, those flaws and mistakes might make you feel more in love somehow. Perhaps they keep you connected to reality, rather than off in airy fairy land.
Overall, when you are in love, you feel no need to think about the “bad side” of this person: you don’t focus on it much like you might with other people.
Think about it. With other people, the first thing you notice is something "bad." With the object of your affections, on the other hand, you initially see something you like, whether that something is one facet of the person or the whole person. Maybe this happens because this person doesn’t have much of a bad side to see at all-- as far as you're concerned, anyhow.
Hyperconnection
Can you become enamored with everyone? Potentially, I’d like to think yes. We are all aspects of the same consciousness after all, and it thus is in our nature to connect.
However, that same idea might entail that some of us aren’t supposed to connect. Perhaps we are supposed to connect indirectly, through other people. By choosing not to be friends with me, for instance, you have time to form connections with others-- connections that would be of more worth and love, anyhow.
Here we have found our limiting factor-- time. Of course we cannot have a substantial relationship with everyone: there is not time enough for it. That borders on impossible, and unless you can hyperconnect or hyper-get-to-know-someone, it’s impractical.
It is optimal, then, to form connections in which your love can manifest beyond the feeling of initial excitement-- and of course, ones in which you actually feel love.
It’s not that you can’t still love a person wonderfully while speaking to them little. It’s just that love is best exemplified in action, which goes beyond feeling and contemplation). It is through action that we truly connect.
Think about it; playing a game of Connect 4 requires action, correct? To form your winning connection you probably will need to do some strategizing, but little will come of that unless you act and drop your little dot into the slot. Throwing in game pieces haphazardly without thought is more effective than laying out the best strategy possible to man and failing to execute.
Get Enamored
I’m not sure that you experience being in love identically from person to person- I’d say not- but there likely is a core place from which all love springs, and a feeling or physical phenomenon which all love shares. That place is the heart, and that feeling, the filling of the heart.
If you haven’t felt this way in a long time- or ever- it can be easy to forget that connecting with humans and being in love can be feel so amazing.
Maybe you have forgotten about that word, love, and have even thought it to be a sham. Well, let this piece of writing tell you that you’d be wrong-- unless, of course, you’d rather stay in that paradigm.
But believe me-- the more you open yourself to love, the more inclined you are to it, and the more receptive you are to loving connections.
Now, go out there and get enamored [with]. ;)