A couple of years ago, I had given up on love, on an entire part of love and the human experience. I just didn’t think it was possible for me. I closed down and then, began to break down. I have a different notion of love. I see that many people give up on it at some point in their lives, just as society conditions them to give up on their dreams and stories and ambitions.

We are trained to see accomplishment and security as linked with money and 401 K’s and the money to pay for pills we might or might not need, depending on which survey comes out this month. I ran headlong into love, and I remember thinking, “I will not let this opportunity pass. I will not be closed to it. I will not let it go and live in the light and spirit of other people and their expectations of me and my life.”

There are all kinds of surveys and statistics about love and the odds of finding it – age, gender, geography, psychology. I don’t choose to live by these odds, but would rather make my own. If you give up on love, you are giving up on so much of what matters in life. Love, like anything worthwhile, is hard work. But to me, it embodies Mary Oliver’s wonderful notion of putting your lips to the world. And just living.

As the Buddhists say, time passes quickly. Use it.