Remember those days when you were young and carefree - days that seemed to be endless with new adventures waiting around every corner? No responsibilities, no worries about the future or the past, just looking forward to getting together with your friends and chatting. It’s difficult to remember what you chatted about now, but it seemed so important at the time. It seemed to each of us that it was possible to make a real difference and change the dreadful mess the adults had made of the world.
Then there were the girls – silly, giggly things they were who couldn’t understand why you wished to spend so much time with your mates. They had no idea about all the brilliant ideas you came up with during your chats, or the comradeship that gave you absolute trust in one another. The girls just wanted to talk about clothes and sloppy weddings and things. You spent as little time as possible with them – until she came along!
She, the first girl to steal your heart away; the one who made you want to make excuses to your mates about why you weren’t able to meet them tonight after all. The girl who made your heart beat faster, made you want to sing and to be with her all the time. The girl for whom you wanted always to look special; the one for whom nothing was too much trouble; the one who made you tongue-tied and awkward except when you were alone together. In her company, the world looked different; you found that things and people that had previously annoyed you suddenly became tolerable. Probably for the first time in your life the needs of another outweigh your own. You became interested in clothes, something that had never bothered you before. The time out of her company dragged interminably while when you were with her, it just flew. You were in love and your whole being seemed attuned to the higher vibrations of life. The colours, sounds and scents of the natural world intrigued you whereas before, you ignored them. You felt somehow an integral part of what was going on all around you. Because of your love for her, you were responding to the love that pervades every living thing.
I am writing this from the point of view of young men but everything is just as true when applied to young women. Our first love is an incredible experience and one we never forget. It is the first occasion that we really become aware of how wrapped up in ourselves we have been to that point. It is our first full awareness of the true, creative force that is responsible for all that there is. The power of love is the power of creation and is the motive force within all life. There are those who will tell you that there are many different grades of love and that romantic love, such as I have described, is very low on the scale of things. Pay no attention to them. All love, romantic or otherwise, is our reason for being and if we were only able to retain the feelings of magnanimity and joy inherent in our first experience of romantic love, our world and our lives would be so much richer.
I believe those who bemoan the negative and violent state of our world and urge us, rightly, to seek the spirit within and let its light shine out, sometimes complicate matters too much. Indeed I am as guilty of this as anyone. Love is so simple, so straight-forward and yet so profound we allow ourselves to become too serious about it. We allow its profundity to obscure its simplicity and spontaneity. If instead of encouraging complicated exercises and meditations, we talked more about romantic love (instead of being flippant about it) and encouraged everyone to try harder to recapture the wonder they felt inside when they first fell in love, more people would understand what we meant. There is no doubt that Victor Hugo was inspired when he penned the words of the title of this post.
Let us all try harder to rekindle that “first, fine, careless rapture” that was ours – let us smile more and frown less, be joyful as we were then, rather than doubting and uncertain, let us uplift and not ‘put down.’ That first love sprang upon us uncalled for and unexpected, we didn’t have to pray for it or work for it, it just happened. The love that can transform the world is equally spontaneous. We just have to let it happen and follow our inner feelings when it does. Our feelings will, in the long run, achieve more happiness for all than will our intellect.
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