Adultery

by Paulo Coelho

Today I am a woman torn between the terror that everything might change and the equal terror that everything might carry on exactly the same for the rest of my days.

When night comes and no one is watching, I feel afraid of everything: life, death, love or the lack of it; the fact that all novelties quickly become habits; the feeling that I’m wasting the best years of my life in a pattern that will be repeated over and over until I die; and sheer panic at facing the unknown, however exciting and adventurous that might be.

To say “we’re happy” might not be entirely true. Everyone is happy apart from me, as I travel to work wondering what’s wrong.

YOU don’t choose your life; it chooses you. There’s no point asking why life has reserved certain joys or griefs, you just accept them and carry on.

We can’t choose our lives, but we can decide what to do with the joys or griefs we’re given.

· Look up at the sky. · Drink lots of iced mineral water. That may seem simple, but it always invigorates me. · Cook. Cooking is the most beautiful and most complete of the arts. It involves all our five senses, plus one more—the need to give of our best. That is my preferred therapy. · Write down a list of complaints. This was a real discovery! Every time I feel angry about something, I write it down. At the end of the day, when I read the list, I realize that I’ve been angry about nothing. · Smile, even if I feel like crying. That is the most difficult thing on the list, but you get used to it. Buddhists say that a fixed smile, however false, lights up the soul. · Take two showers a day, instead of one. It dries the skin because of the hard water and chlorine, but it’s worth it, because it washes the soul clean.

During the ice age, many animals died of cold, so the porcupines decided to band together to provide one another with warmth and protection. But their spines or quills kept sticking into their surrounding companions, precisely those who provided the most warmth. And so they drifted apart again. And again many of them died of cold. They had to make a choice: either risk extinction or accept their fellow porcupines’ spines. Very wisely, they decided to huddle together again. They learned to live with the minor wounds inflicted by their relatives, because the most important thing to their survival was that shared warmth.

Why is Love more important than Faith? Because Faith is merely the road that leads us to the Greater Love. Why is Love more important than Charity? Because Charity is only one of the manifestations of Love. And the whole is always more important than the part. And Charity is also only one of the many roads that Love uses to bring man closer to his fellow man.

There is nothing more important we can give than the Love reflected in our own lives.

Paul shows us the rainbow of Love just as a prism reveals to us the rainbow of light. And what are those elements? They are virtues we hear about every day and that we can practice in every moment. Patience: Love is patient … Kindness:… and kind. Generosity: Love does not envy … Humility:… or boast; it is not arrogant … Courtesy:… or rude. Unselfishness: It does not insist on its own way. Good temper: It is not irritable … or resentful. Guilelessness: or resentful. Sincerity: It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. All these gifts concern us, our daily lives, and today and tomorrow, not with Eternity. The problem is that people tend to relate these traits to the Love of God, but how does God’s Love manifest itself? Through the Love of man. To find Peace in the heavens, we must find love on Earth. Without it, we are worthless.

It has been a while since we had an intense sexual relationship. In a healthy relationship, this is even more important for a couple’s stability than making plans for the future or talking about the children.

When we love someone, we’re not satisfied with knowing only the person’s soul—we also want to understand the person’s body.

“We aren’t who we want to be. We are what society demands. We are what our parents choose. We don’t want to disappoint anyone; we have a great need to be loved. So we smother the best in us. Gradually, the light of our dreams turns into the monster of our nightmares. They become things not done, possibilities not lived.”

“Because, ever since we’ve moved away from God, we live a fragmented existence. We try to find oneness, but we don’t know the way back; thus, we are in a state of constant dissatisfaction. Society prohibits and creates laws, but this does not solve the problem.”

Love isn’t just a feeling; it’s an art. And like any art, it takes not only inspiration, but also a lot of work.

“Those who cannot accept this, and who always try to find an explanation for magical and mysterious human relationships, will miss the best part of life.”

“I’m not afraid of loneliness,” he continues. “I’m afraid of deluding myself, of looking at reality the way I would like it to be and not how it really is.”

“When you love each other, you have to be ready for anything. Because love is like a kaleidoscope, the kind we used to play with when we were kids. It’s in constant movement and never repeats itself.

I know I’m not the only one—people have a tendency for self-destruction.