The Forest of Enchantments

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

a trained mind is your strongest ally—and an untrained one your worst enemy.’

I was in love, and love is wild and optimistic, especially in the beginning.

even the strongest intellect may be weakened by love. This struck me as paradoxical. Shouldn’t love make us more courageous? More determined to live according to our principles?

This incident taught me that the more love we distribute, the more it grows, coming back to us from unexpected sources. And its corollary: when we demand love, believing it to be our right, it shrivels, leaving only resentment behind.

So this, too, was true of love: it could make us forget our own needs. It could make us strong even when the world was collapsing around us.

it’s not enough to merely love someone. Even if we love them with our entire being, even if we’re willing to commit the most heinous sin for their well-being. We must understand and respect the values that drive them. We must want what they want, not what we want for them.

I blamed love, too, for my silence. How it makes us back down from protesting because we’re afraid of displeasing the beloved, or because we’re afraid that our disagreement is the symptom of a greater disease: incompatibility of values.

love—no matter how deep—wasn’t enough to transform another person: how they thought, what they believed. At best, we could only change ourselves.

I couldn’t control what was done to me. But my response to it was in my control.

And this is one of the final things I learn about love: it’s found in its purest form, on this imperfect earth, between mothers and young children, because there’s nothing they want except to make each other happy.

this is the most important aspect of love, whose other face is compassion: It isn’t doled out, drop by drop. It doesn’t measure who is worthy and who isn’t. It is like the ocean. Unfathomable. Astonishing. Measureless.’