Love

"For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love: it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces gathered around their solitary, anxious upward-beating hearts, they must learn to love. But learning time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is solitude, a heightened and deepened aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent?). It is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person." ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
That loving is, in great measure, a solitary experience, goes against our desire for it to be a union of spirits. No doubt Love calls us to become both more human and more divine. Though we may hear its call, we too often rush to the comfort of the merging, instead of bravely facing that aspect that urges us to learn by, for and with Love in and of itself, and often by ourselves. When we meet others on our way, we can each respond to this higher calling, or we can respond to the wounded parts, in ourselves or in each other, that keep us from getting to the true harvest.