Young love is about wanting to be happy. Old love is about wanting someone else to be happy.
~ Mary Pipher, Psychologist
When I first saw this quote in The Boston Sunday Globe (11/18/07 in “A love supreme finds space in dementia”), I thought it was beautiful. But now I’m wondering if it is referring to a codependent love? Do we naturally sacrifice our own happiness for others? Is it a true exchange? Does wanting others to be happy make us happy as well? Will that be a quiet, joyful feeling, or an ecstatic white light flight into the heights of happiness? Or sometimes one, then the other, plus all the levels in between?
I am also reminded of a sermon I heard a while back, when the pastor asked, “Can there be love without sacrifice?” I was percolating on that for a while, and realized that true love is refined in the kilm of sacrifice. That is where it truly gets to shine and become complete. The crucible of marriage has taught me this and I trust it is for the good…but sometimes I do wonder. This is truly a dialectical debate, dealing with the pain in the name of love.
As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said, “For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
Thoughts?
I’m Curious. Can we have deep love without sacrifice?
Onward and Upward,
Lisa Wessan
The Lighter Side of Transformation 
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