Do you make bad romantic choices?

❝ In the past, yes I most certainly have. Who hasn’t? Love won and love lost is part of the human experience. Show me someone who has never made a bad choice and I will show you someone who has never lived. You would think having an extremely strong sense of empathy would help in affairs of the heart, but without a solid foundation in self they only serve to perpetuate confusion. In my day-to-day life I often had trouble discerning energies and emotions which arose in myself from those of others. This was only magnified by intimate relationships. After a number of daunting experiences, I realized that I would have to fully illuminate my empathy or be destroyed by it. This led me on quite a difficult yet rewarding journey and having lived it I know I am stronger for it.

My advice to all who may find themselves inundated by empathy: Define your sovereign borders before you define yourself with another. Until you can, your journey must be a solitary one. Many of our greatest challenges are actually our greatest strengths in disguise. Once you realize this you are already on your way towards their actualization.

But back to the matter at hand, romance.

Romance is often at odds with logic, and sometimes even intuition. The trouble with romance is that we mistake the sways of passion for something we believe is love. However, Love does not make us insane, it instills a sanity and depth most of us travel our whole lives without ever knowing. The irony is that we are not missing some obscure puzzle piece, or that we have not yet found the right person.
Do you want to meet the love of your life? Look in the mirror.❞
— Katie Byron

(via metaconscious)

I'm trying to work on myself and need affirmations that it's okay for me to do this alone. Everyone around me is in a relationship and there's this sort of unspoken pressure that I couldn't really be happy single. Perhaps a self imposed pressure. Love, love, love. It is truly a beautiful thing. What's not beautiful about it is the rejection, the loss, the heartache. I could live without those for awhile! Love itself is beautiful.

Recently, a cute boy recommended for me to read The Alchemist, a fable about life, passion and dreams. I had started it years ago, but got distracted with nothing in particular and never found the right moment to pick it up again till he reminded me. So I'm finishing it off now and quite pleased. It's a book that has gotten a lot of flack for being blunt and simple, for characters that lack depth and complexity, for the religious mambo-jambo mixed in, but at the heart and soul of this book lies much meaning. A life philosophy expressed in a fable, without restraint and subtlety you might find in a great literary work. But it's within this imperfect, simple writing that your thoughts are provoked and you find yourself delving into the chasms of secret hopes and dreams. I don't know, it works for me.

I like asking questions. It's an annoying habit of mine. Well, not annoying for me, but maybe for others. Asking questions of myself is so important, why wouldn't it be important to ask people/strangers/friends questions? So I ask myself today; what will I do with that feeling, that pulling and tugging in my heart? Will I drown out the voice of the passion I feel for something that might go against what others expect of Me? "Purpose is the place where your deep gladness meets the world's needs". What makes me glad? The world needs our gladness and our passion. I know it sounds cliché, but for someone like myself who has trouble separating my energies and emotions from others' - regularly taking deep, hard looks within my heart is something I need to always be reminded to do.

I'm going to go finish reading...

The boy and his heart had become friends, and neither was capable now of betraying the other. --
The Alchemist