Is essential to love. Without a sharing of one’s self, and without the acceptance of that self by another, there is no real love. At best there is only acquaintance. There might be cordiality and cooperation, and perhaps a degree of superficial familiarity, but nothing so intimate that it could be labeled “love.”
Love is a meandering journey of self-disclosure. It’s not a one-stop shop full of get-to-know-me trinkets. It’s not a questionnaire to be filled out and referred back to as needed. It’s not a speed train engineered to make the fastest trip between Point A and Point B. In fact, there is no Point B. No point of arrival.
Love is an ongoing process of getting to know the ever-evolving other, who was already infinitely complex from the beginning. The other you knew and loved a year ago is not the same other that you know and love today. And you, of course, have changed as well. Circumstances and experiences and imagination have made you new and different. There is continually more of yourself to reveal, more of you to be known and loved.
Which sounds like a lot of persistent hard work. Which I suppose is true. But it also sounds like a whole lot of adventurous fun.
