Love

When you fall in love, it transforms you like alchemy. The whole world changes in the light of this love: things that might have been boring before take on an extraordinary vibrancy. The whole world suddenly makes sense and the suffering in it becomes almost incidental. The person you love seems more valuable than you are yourself and you know that you would willingly die to save that person. To use Bertrand Russell's word, everything is 'transfigured'. It fills you with extraordinary joy.

Now I am going to stick a pin in the balloon I have created. You may find that your love isn't reciprocated and the person isn't nearly as good as you thought they were.

But heck, the love was real and the experience was real. The world in that transformed state was just as valid as it was when you were doomed and gloomy. That leads you to search for the experience again. The person may have let you down, but you still love love. The love has a reality of its own, like the fragrance of a flower.

When you love someone, you love them just because they are there. They don't even have to do anything.

What if you could love the whole of creation like that, just because it's there? What if you could love the source of all things like that?