Can You Run Out of Love?
Well, you can try, but the feeling of having run out of love is always temporary.
In truth, even when you feel like you’ve run out of love, what you’ve really done is to become overwhelmed.
You’re feeling too much at one time, so you sort of shut down.
Before long though, when you’ve settled back down, you’ll find yourself feeling love for something or someone. (Just remember; that “felt love” will sometimes include feeling love for yourself.)
If we were made of something other than love, we could run out of it. But we’re not, so we can’t.
If this seems hard to believe, think of a time when you were completely exhausted and overwhelmed.
Have you really run out of love?
This is the sort of circumstance where it can really feel like you’ve run out of love. But have you? What always happens when you’ve recharged yourself? The love is still there, and there’s as much of it as there ever was.
This is one of the most reassuring insights I’ve ever had. In those moments of exhaustion and overwhelm, when I feel as wrung out and empty as I ever have, it can be hard to believe that the love I’m made of is accessible to me.
Whenever I’m in an intensely unpleasant state of mind, that state of mind can seem like it has always been there and will always be there.
But the nature of any state of mind is temporary. Even when a bad feeling state of mind goes on for a long time, it’s still temporary. It will eventually pass.
Knowing this makes that state of mind, whatever it may be, infinitely easier to live through. When you know something is going to end, there’s no need to spend time worrying that it might stay around forever. In fact, I’ve found that when you know something is going to end, there’s no need to focus on it at all.
As my body has gotten older, I find myself spending a larger percentage of my time in physical pain.
Though it’s not my favorite sensation, I’ve learned what a wonderful teacher pain can be. Intense, persistent pain is no one’s idea of a good time, and certainly not a condition to be wished for, but I find myself feeling grateful for what I’ve learned from it.
Chief among those lessons is seeing how pain, powerful though it may be, doesn’t have the power to diminish the love I’m made of.
This may sound strange to you, but what I’ve found is that pain is a perfect testing ground for what I think I know about love.
This may sound even stranger: the experience of ongoing pain is what let me see for myself that the love I’m made of can’t be diminished by pain of any kind, and is always available to me.
Feeling grateful for what I’ve learned through my experience with physical pain has made it possible for me to see things I never would have believed were true.
We’re not made of love only when we can feel that love. It’s always there.
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