True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. it's a decision, it's a judgement, it's a promise.

The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.

All the romantic lore of our culture has told us when we find true love with a partner it will continue.
Yet this partnership lasts only if both parties remain committed to being loving.
Not everyone can bear the weight of true love.
Wounded hearts turn away from love because they do not want to do the work of healing necessary to sustain and nurture love.
Many men, especially, often turn away from true love and choose relationships in which they can be emotionally withholding when they feel like it but still receive love from someone else.
Ultimately, they choose power over love. To know and keep true love we have to be willing to surrender the will to power.

akeru. It means "to pierce, to open, to end, to make a hole in, to start, to expire, to unwrap, to turn over." When someone leaves, akeru refers to the empty space that is created, the opening in which a new beginning can take place. I was amazed at the power of a single word that could suggest that to begin and to end are the same—part of one never-ending cycle of renewal

hotel lobbies photographed by diane keaton

Egolessness means that the fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is painfully limiting. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem. Self-importance is like a prison for us, limiting us to the world of our likes and dislikes.

Vicky Krieps by esther theaker

an honorable human relationship, which is one where two people have the right to use love, is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other.

it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation

the undefended heart

winona talking to herself about god