quote(s) for today

Recently, I've had a number of people talk to me about love and suffering. I want to tell them that if you get married or have children that the love makes you galvanized so the suffering just slides off of you. but that would be a huge lie. i think the truth is that love makes you less self-conscious when you do it right; that self-consciousless-ness makes the pain bearable. But the pain that comes from adding people to your life through marriage, birth, or community also increases exponentially. I'm either forced to withdraw from those relationships to lick my wounds alone or to dive into the relationships loving as authentically as I can, as unself-consciously as possible. But enough from my yap. Here are the quotes: "We must not think that our love has to be extraordinary. But we do need to love without getting tired. How does a lamp burn? Through the continuous input of small drops of oil. These drops are the small things of daily life: faithfulness, small words of kindness, a thought for others, our way of being quiet, of looking, of speaking, and of acting. They are the true drops of love that keep our lives and relationships burning like a lively flame." --Mother Teresa "To love is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one?Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries, avoid all entanglements, lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfish?ness?The only alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers, all the perturbations of love is hell." --C. S. Lewis