“Love flows like the river; always itself, yet ever changing, recognizing no obstacle.”
- Leo Buscaglia

According to Leo Buscaglia, love is life’s greatest challenge. In “Love - What life is all about”, the Professor of Love teaches what love is, what love is not, and shares his ideas on how to learn to love. Below are some of my favorite excerpts from “Love“, intermingled with some of my own thoughts regarding this incredible book about love.

Love is many things.

“Love is a dynamic interaction, lived every second of our lives, all of our lives.”

“Love is like a mirror. When you love another you become his mirror and he becomes yours … . And reflecting each other’s love you see infinity.”

Love is trusting.

Love is an act of faith. “The perfect love would be one that gives all and expects nothing. It would, of course, be willing and delighted to take anything it was offered; the more the better. But it would ask for nothing.”

Love is patient. A relationship “is a sharing, a mutual revealing of one’s knowledge of love.” Each man has an endless capacity to love. It is “helpless to berate, judge, predict, demand or assume. Love must be patient. Love waits. This doesn’t mean that love sits passively forever, if necessary, for the person to grow. Love is active, not passive… . It shares in knowledge and offers a proving ground for trying out what’s learned… . Love’s potential is limitless.”

If one wants love, one must move to love. I will to love. The lover must often say, “I love because I must, because I will it. I love for myself, not for others. I love for the joy it gives me - and incidentally, only - for that joy it gives to others. If they reinforce me it will be good. If they do not, it will be good, for I will to love.”

“One must never be satisfied with his ability to love. No matter where he is, it is always just a beginning.” Do not fear change. Change is inevitable. Deterrents to love are man-made. “Love will not be deterred. Love flows like the river; always itself, yet ever changing, recognizing no obstacle.”

There are innumerable paths to loving. According to Carlos Castaneda, “Each path is only one of a million paths. Therefore, you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you must not follow it, you must not stay with it under any circumstances… any path is only a path, there is no affront to yourself or others in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear and ambition. I warn you! Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and you alone, one question… It is this… Does the path have a heart? All paths are the same; they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the brush, or into the brush. Does this path have a heart is the question. If it does, then the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere, but one has heart and the other doesn‘t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it you will be one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong, the other weakens you.”

No matter what the goal, if your path is love, then the process, the path, will have heart. You can only be on your path. The hardest thing in the world is to be something you are not. The easiest thing in the world is to be yourself. “Find ‘you,’ who you are, be as you are.”

“Love never gives direction, for it knows that to lead a man off his path is to give him our path which will never be truly right for him and is certain to ‘weaken’ him… . Our love is there to give him sustenance, the strength to continue his seeking securely, in joy, and offer him the day-by-day encouragement he will require… . Love is his guide, not his leader… . Love never reflects the giver… . He has his path and love encourages him on his way, even if his path does not intersect with out desired path. To hold him to what we believe to be the right path for his is to lead him into darkness.”

Live now. The only reality is “what is here, what is happening between you and me right now. If you live for tomorrow, which is only a dream, then all you are going to have is an unrealized dream. And the past is no longer real. It has value because it made you what you are now, but that is all the value that it has. So don’t live in the past. Live now. When you are eating, eat. When you are loving, love. When you are talking to someone, talk. When you are looking at a flower, look. Catch the beauty of the moment.”

Everything in life, including you, is in the process of change. “Every day is new. Every experience is new. Every person is new. Everything is new, every morning of your life.” Connect.

Love lives the moment and is spontaneous. “Life is not the goal, it is the process… . There is only the moment. The now. Only what you are experiencing at this second is real… . Only the moment has true value, for it’s here. Love knows this - it doesn’t look back - it experiences the past and takes the best from it. It doesn’t look forward. It knows that tomorrow’s dream remains waiting and may never come. Love is now! It is only in the ‘now’ that love is reality. Love has meaning only as it is experienced in the now.”

“Love can only be given, expressed freely. It can’t be captured or held, for its neither there to tie nor to hold. It’s in everyone and everything in varying degrees and awaits actualization. It’s not apart from the self. Love and the self are one. There are not kinds of love, love is love; there are only degrees of love. Love is trusting, accepting and believing without guarantee. Love is patient and waits, but it’s an active waiting, not a passive one. For it is continually offering itself in a mutual revealing, a mutual sharing. Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears. Love lives the moment; it’s neither lost in yesterday nor does it crave for tomorrow. Love is Now!”

Love involves responsibilities. Buscaglia states that the responsibilities of love are: love of self, saying “Yes” to love, growth, creating joy, expression and communication, accepting and understanding, empathy, sharing, hope, and humanity.

The loving individual has to care about himself or herself. “Before man can love all men or any man, his first responsibility in love is, and always will be to himself… . All men are related to a greater or smaller extent, interconnected, and each man who comes closer to himself in any way comes closer to others.”

The loving individual who cares about herself says, “Everything is filtered through me, and so the greater I am, the more I have to give. The greater knowledge I have, the more I’m going to have to give. The greater understanding I have, the greater is my ability to teach others and to make myself the most fantastic, the most beautiful, the most wondrous, the most tender human being in the world.”

There is an enormous, untapped potential in every human being. We must celebrate the “wonderful uniqueness” of every individual. You are the only you. Be yourself. “The easiest thing in the world to be is what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be.”

“To love oneself is to struggle to rediscover and maintain your uniqueness. It is understanding and appreciating the idea that you will be the only you to ever live upon this earth, that when you die so will all of your fantastic possibilities.”

“What may be is always potential for discovery. It’s never too late. This knowledge should give man his greatest challenge - the pursuit of self - his own personal Odyssey… . It should challenge him not only to be a good person, but the best, most loving, feeling, intelligent person he is capable of… . So loving yourself involves the discovery of the true wonder of you; not only the present you, but the many possibilities of you. It involves the continual realization that you are unique, like no other person in the world, that life is, or should be, the discovery, the development and sharing of this uniqueness.”

“If you value and appreciate the discovery of yourself, you will encourage others to engage in self-discovery.”

“To the extent to which you know yourself, and we are all more alike than different, you can know others. When you love yourself, you will love others. And to the depth and extent to which you can love yourself, only to that depth and extent will you be able to love others.”

To love, one must be willing to say “yes” to love. “A lover says, ‘Yes’ to life, ‘Yes’ to joy, ‘Yes’ to knowledge, ‘Yes’ to people, ‘Yes’ to differences. He realizes that all things and people have something to offer to him, that all things are in all things.”

Love involves growth - “personal growth as well as the growth of selves and those whom we love“. The essence of loving another is “to assure them that we are dedicated to their growth, to the actualization of their limitless potential.”

“As soon as the love relationship does not lead me to me, as soon as I in a love relationship do not lead another person to himself, this love, even if it seems to be the most secure and ecstatic attachment I have ever experienced, is not true love. For real love is dedicated to continual becoming.”

One does not fall in or out of love. One grows in love. “Man is either constantly growing in love, or dying.” “The more all encompassing his love, the greater his growth. The love of humanity is the natural outgrowth of love for a single individual. From one man to all men.”

“One loves because he wills it, because it gives him joy, because he knows that growth and discovery of oneself depend upon it. He knows that the only assurance he has lies within himself. If he trusts and believes in himself, he will trust and believe others… . When you cease placing conditions on your love you have taken a giant step toward learning to love.”

Love is “our greatest challenge, for love and the self are one and the discovery of either is the realization of both.”

Love involves creating joy. “Joy is always an integral part of loving… . To work in love is to work in joy.”

“Man seldom questions the fact that ugliness and evil are to be found in the world. But he’s never as ready to accept that life also offers unlimited beauty and potential for joy as well as endless opportunities for pleasure.”

Love involves expression and communication. “As man must assume the responsibility for expressing his joy, in like manner he is responsible for letting his sorrow and loneliness be known… . If one needs, one must let others know of his need or it can never be met. Even lovers are not mind readers… . As one shows others he loves them, so must he reveal to them his need for love. You cannot assume that people, even those most close to you, will know and understand your unexpressed needs and feelings. If you want people to know you, you are responsible for communicating yourself to them.”

“Love teaches a man to show what he is feeling.” Love is not afraid to feel. Love should be expressed physically.

Love involves accepting and understanding. “Love in marriage, or any close relationship, for example, is the process of growing hand in hand, but separately. Separately, because it’s impossible to expect that two individuals, even in love, will grow at the same rate and in the same direction. This means that one may not always totally understand or appreciate another’s growth or its resultant behavior. But love helps us to accept the fact that the other individual is behaving only as he is able to behave at the moment. To ask that he act otherwise is to ask the impossible.”

“A loving person recognizes needs. He needs people who care, someone who cares at least about him, who truly sees and hears him.” A loving person needs at least one person who cares deeply about him.

Love involves empathy and sharing. “Love is always changing and always learning. Love offers the greatest flexibility.” Love “is a matter of accepting the person unconditionally for what he is at the moment, realizing that what he is today is not what he will be tomorrow. A lover is then, constantly watching, listening, waiting, feeling, adjusting, readjusting and changing.”

“If two people grow apart in love, it is usually due to the fact that one or the other refuses to grow or change. In this case, a lover can either decide to adjust to the behavior, ignore it or, after all else seems useless, move away from it, and leave. You may ask the question, ‘But is ‘moving away’ really love?’ Indeed it is. For if a lover stands in the way of another then he is no longer loving.”

Love involves hope, but Buscaglia states that it is beyond hope. “In hope, man shows a deep respect and faith in man’s ability to change, a belief in the ‘integrity of the universe,’ in new beginnings, in exciting tomorrows… . But love goes beyond hope. Hope is a beginning. Love is forever.”

Lastly, the core of love is humanity. “The greatest thing a man can be is a human being with the strengths and the frailties implied in the meaning… . [I]t is the humanity of man that gives us the common base from which we can have empathy in love… . It’s this empathy that makes us responsible in love to all men. With each man who dies in the world, each of us dies a little. With each person who suffers, we, too, suffer a little. With each child born in the world, we all become richer in possibilities. We’re all unconditionally like the other.”

Herbert Otto states: “Only in a continuing relationship is there a possibility for love to become deeper and fuller so that it envelops all of our life and extends into the community.” For only a deep relationship offers “the adventure of uncovering the depth of our love, the height of our humanity. It means risking ourselves physically and emotionally; leaving old habit patterns and developing new ones; being able to express our desires fully, while sensitive to the needs of the other; being aware that each changes at his own rate, and unafraid to ask for help when needed.”

“To live in love is life’s greatest challenge. It requires more subtlety, flexibility, sensitivity, understanding, acceptance, tolerance, knowledge and strength than any other human endeavor or emotion, for love and the actual world make up what seem like two great contradictory forces… . So, the only chance he has for a depth of love is to give all that he has… . He knows he must trust and believe in love, for it’s the only approach to love.”

If you believe in a world of good, you will “remain confident, trusting, vulnerable and hopeful.” “Real love always creates, it never destroys. In this lies man’s only promise.”

Father William Du Bay stated, “The most human thing we have to do in life is to learn to speak our honest convictions and feelings and live with the consequences. This is the first requirement of love, and it makes us vulnerable to other people who may ridicule us. But our vulnerability is the only thing we can give to other people.”

Be vulnerable.

If you can ever learn about Love from a book - this is it! Leo is a love master and sage. You will remember that Love is about Joy, expression and communication, about accepting and understanding, learning and empathy, trust and sharing.

Love and the self are one and the discovery of either is the realization of both. Simple, beatiful and profound. Love it!

This book is Awesome LEO Buscaglia has taught me the real meaning of LOVE. Every school should have a LOVE class based on LEO's teachings : )  

There are not kinds of love, love is love; there are only degrees of love. Love is trusting, accepting and believing, without guarantee. Love is patient and waits, but it's an active waiting, not a passive one. For it is continually offering itself in a mutual revealing, a mutual sharing, Love is spontaneous and craves expression through joy, through beauty, through truth, even through tears. Love lives in the moment; it's neither lost in yesterday nor does it crave for tomorrow. Love is Now!

Love revels in and grows in the moment and the joy of the moment.