Most of the people in your life who have told you they love you, don't. While you might be able to accept that, probably most of you have probably told someone that you love them, but you don't. The vast majority of people in this world are incapable of love. Not because you're crippled, not because you're sick, not because you're damaged individuals ... but because you think love is like breathing or smiling, a thing that just happens in your life.

It takes a couple of years of developing the muscles and the vestibular sense to learn how to walk, and even once the basic skills are there, it takes several years more before you can walk gracefully without tripping on things, falling over and crying a lot. You take walking for granted, but there was a time when you couldn't. You had to learn it, and then you had to spend years practising. The ability to love in humans is far more like walking than smiling.

Yes, you have the basic equipment, but with walking you had someone who knew how to walk and who knew how important it was, who showed you from the time you were small how to do it. Who celebrated and clapped and told you how amazing you were when you made even the weakest efforts at it. And you have been forced by your society to practice it every single day. This is not true of love.

You have probably never had anyone in your life who was skilled at love. Who could show you how to do it, who could encourage you when you're getting it right, who could let you hold on to their hands with your chubby little fingers so you could stand up right for a minute and practise loving. And having not had it as an infant, you didn't develop it as a child, and having not had it as a child, you didn't have it as a teen or an adult.

There may have been a moment where you fell in love. Like a child standing up at the edge of the table for the first time: Yes you're upright, but you have no practise and no balance and pretty soon you're going to fall back down on your butt. It's that way with falling in love. For a moment the colours are brighter and everything is beautiful and the world is a wonderful place, but you can't maintain it and a short time later you fall out of love. And you feel sad because it's gone, but you know it was always temporary.

The truth is, it isn't temporary. To love, truly, is to have that in-love feeling all the time, every moment, every day for the rest of your life. And you can have that. However, it doesn't come to you like smiling comes to an infant. It comes to you like walking comes to an infant. You have to have the desire, and build up the muscles. Then you have to practise day after day after day before you begin to do it gracefully, without thinking, in every breath.

So if you have ever told someone you loved them, it's almost certainly not true, simply because you haven't had this practise. Love is a skill that takes development. Knowing this, you can realise a thing that you're lacking. You're a world full of people still sitting on the floor like when you were an infant, not even wondering what it would be like to walk because none of you have ever walked. It's possible that every one of you can learn to not only walk, but to run and dance and climb and play. Every one of you can learn to love truly and powerfully, to wake up every day with a sense of love that is so fast that the colours are bright and the world is beautiful and everything that comes your way is a precious and sacred gift. You can live with this joy and this power all the time, every day ... if you're willing to work for it.

Angel, 2014-09-07