This weekend, we celebrate Eric’s birthday. He grows up, I grow old. Time flies. Only memories remain …

On his real birthday, we went to Pro Bono, a small cozy italian restaurant in Palo Alto. Today is C’s last day in the States. Since SW, I made a point not to be closed to any boy/girl/friend of my kids. I rather keep my love and compassion at a distance. My emotional and physical heart can no longer take the brutality of a broken relationship.

We meet many people, go through many relationships in our life. It would be interesting to analyze what attracts us to each of them. Is it the protective fatherly love that we missed, the tenderly care and motherly devotion, the open-mindedness we so admire in someone we grew up with, the memory of a past we cherish …What starts a relationship, and what makes it last?

Considering nothing is eternal, why do we expect love to be forever lasting?  Love is a function of the body. When you love, your heart palpitates, your mind races, your limbs get weak. You feel the intense passion and the tender care.  But it is still, my friend,  temporal. It is lilies in the pond; they bud, they bloom, then they fade. It is clouds in the sky; they form, they float, then they disappear.

So in your next interaction, take a deep breadth, and love with intensity and generosity. Give each other lots of time and presents and presence. Say everything you feel from your heart. Listen with compassion. Do all that with no thoughts of gain, and know that you do not possess the person you love. Create moments. When the story ends, we will still have memories to cherish.

When we dwell in the pleasure of our senses, attractions to further pleasures arise. From attraction comes attachment, the desire for possession that leads to passion and burns into anger. Passion and anger cloud judgment and lead to confusion, the inability to learn from past mistakes and the failure to choose between what is wise and what is unwise. This is the path of separation.

But when we move in the world of the senses, yet keep our senses of harmony, free from attachment to attraction or aversion, we rest in the wisdom heart of our True Nature, the true equanimity of Being, in which all sorrow and suffering cease.

I wish you complete happiness in everything you do, everywhere you go.