Love or Infatuation?

Here's a guide that will help you to identify if you really feel love or only infatuation.

Love Versus Infatuation

"*Infatuation is instant desire. It is one set of glands calling to another.*Love is a friendship that has caught fire. It takes root and grows, one day at a time.

*Infatuation is marked by a feeling of insecurity. You are excited and eager, but not genuinely happy. There are nagging doubts, unanswered questions, little bits and places about your beloved that you would just as soon not examine too closely. It might spoil the dream.*Love is quiet understanding and the mature acceptance of imperfection. It is real. It gives you strength and grows beyond you to bolster your beloved. You are warmed by his/her presence even when he/she is away. Miles do not separate you. You want him/her nearer, but near or far, you know he/she is yours and you can wait.

*Infatuation says, "We must get married right away! I can't risk losing you!"*Love says, "Be patient. Do not panic. Plan your future with confidence."

*Infatuation has an element of sexual excitement. If you are honest, you can admit it is difficult to be in one another's company unless you are sure it will end-- in intimacy.*Love is the maturation of friendship. You must be friends before you can be lovers.

*Infatuation lacks confidence. When he/she is away you wonder if he/she is cheating. Sometimes you check.*Love means trust. You are calm, secure and unthreatened. Your beloved feels that also and makes them even more trustworthy.

*Infatuation might lead you to do things you will regret later, but love never will.

*Love is an upper. It makes you look up. It makes you think up. It makes you a better person."

Wisdom Vs. Knowledge

"Knowledge is but the messenger that calls you to wisdom, but it is not wisdom. One can gain knowledge, but one does not seek wisdom - one meets it when one often least expects it and recognizes it as kindred. Knowledge puts us in the way of wisdom, but wisdom is experiential; it is a truth one recognizes in the external world that already resides in the internal one. One cannot *learn* wisdom - one must awaken it. Knowledge gives you the tools but never mistake the tools for the treasure.

I find that most religions preach the tools and talk wisdom to death trying to reduce it for swift and easy consumption. Shun this habit. Kahlil Gibran said that height and depth are nearer to each other than the mid ground. Do not be mislead - athere are no fast-food outlets for wisdom.

Simplicity is best understood as we find the endless connections in complexity. Simplicity cannot be found in one prophet, one book, one religion or one school of study. It is found in all of life by learning from everything - people, books, experiences, pain and pleasure, this age and ages past. "

The True Meaning of Life

Love gives meaning to our lives – as do friendship, or art or faith in God. These are factors of true happiness, of inner peace, of feelings of harmony, allowing meaning to our existence.But there is the other side.

There is the cruelty of life, the pain, the evil, not to talk of death. They are the hidden tigers, ambushed and ready to attack the imprudent, to use an image present in the Buddhist Scriptures.

Is between these pendulums - the positive, the one that gives happiness and meaning, and the negative - that our lives are lived. And when we meditate about all that, we arrive at a diverse and disagreeing set of thoughts about the meaning and purpose of life.

Each of us has different cognizance of what life is...

For me, 'Life' is an unanswered question, but let's still believe in the dignity and importance of this question...