For, to love another is to address to that person the most powerful and imperious form of appeal. It is to stir up in his or her depths a silent and hidden person forced to emerge in response to our voice, so new that even its owner did not know it, yet so true that he or she cannot fail to recognize it, even though seeing it for the first time.
Our life has not been an ascent
up one side of a mountain and down the other.
We did not reach a peak,
only to decline and die.
We have been as drops of water,
born in the ocean and sprinkled on the earth
in a gentle rain.
We became a spring,
and then a stream,
and finally a river flowing deeper and stronger,
nourishing all it touches
as it nears its home once again.