For me to love is to commit myself, freely and without reservation. I am sincerely interested in your happiness and well-being. Whatever your needs are, I will try to fulfil them and will bend in my values depending on the importance of your need. If you are lonely and need me, I will be there. If in that loneliness you need to talk, I will listen and if you need to listen, I will talk. If you need the strength of human touch, I will touch you. If you need to be held, I will hold you. I will lie naked in body with you if that be your need. If you need fulfilment of the flesh, I will give you that also but only through my love. I will try to be constant with you so that you will understand the care of my personality and from that understanding you can gain strength and security that I am acting as me. I may falter with my moods. I may project, at times, a strangeness that is alien to you which may bewilder or frighten you. There will be times when you question my motives. But because people are never constant and are as changeable as the seasons, I will try to build up within you a faith in my fundamental attitude and show you that my inconsistency is only for the moment and not a lasting part of me. I will show you love now, each and every day, for each day is a lifetime. Every day we live, we learn more how to love. I will not defer my love or neglect it, for if I wait until tomorrow, tomorrow never comes. It is like a cloud in the sky, passing by. They always do, you know. If I give you kindness and understanding, then I will receive your faith. If I give you hate and dishonesty, I will receive your distrust. If I give you fear and am afraid, you will become afraid and fear me. I will give what I need to receive. I will give you as much love as I can. If you will show me how to give more, I will give more. I can only give as much as you need to receive or allow me to give. If you receive all I can give, then my love is endless and fulfilled. If you receive a part of my love, then I will give others the balance of what I am capable of giving. I must give all that I have being what I am. Love is universal. Love is the movement of life. I have loved a boy, a girl, my parents, my neighbours, art, nature, all things in life I find beautiful. No human being or society has the right to condemn any kind of love I feel or my way of expressing it if I am sincere. I want to become a truly loving spirit. Let my words, if I must speak, become a restoration of your soul. But only when speech is silent does a man project the great depth of his sensitivity. When I touch you or kiss you or hold you, I am saying a thousand words. ~ Walter Rinder PLEASE HEAR WHAT I'M NOT SAYING Don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear. For I wear a mask, I wear a thousand masks. Masks that I'm afraid to take off, and none of them are me. Pretending is an art that's second nature with me, But don't be fooled. I give you the impression that I'm secure, That all is sunny and unruffled with me, within as well as without That confidence is my name and coolness my game, Yhat the water's calm and I'm in command, And that I need no one. But don't believe me.. Please. My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, My ever-varying and ever-concealing mask. Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence. Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness. But I can hide this. I don't want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, A nonchalant, sophisticated facade, to help me pretend, To shield me from the glance that knows. But such a glance is precisely my salvation. And I know it. That is if it's followed by acceptance. It's the only thing that can liberate me, from myself, From my own self-built prison walls, From the barriers that I so painstakingly erect. It's the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself, That I'm really worth something. But I don't tell you this, I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love. I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh, And your laugh would wound me. I'm afraid that deep-down I'm not much, And you will see this and reject me. So I play my game, my pretending game, With a facade of securance without. So when I'm going through my routine Do not be fooled by what I'm saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear What I'm not saying, What I'd like to be able to say, but can't. Who am I, you may wonder, I am someone you know very well, For I am every man you meet and every woman you meet. PLEASE LISTEN When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked. When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings. When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem. Listen! All I ask is that you listen. Don't talk or do - just hear me. Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper. And I can do for myself; I am not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless. When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy. But when you accept as a simple fact that I feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can stop trying to convince you and get about this business of understanding what's behind this irrational feeling. And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice. Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's behind them. Perhaps that's why prayer works, sometimes, for some people - because God is mute, and he doesn't give advice or try to fix things. God just listens and lets you work it out for yourself. So please listen, and just hear me. And if you want to talk, wait a minute for your turn - and I will listen to you. ~ Author Unknown ~