Discussing: An act of Love

"I respect your views ..."

How many times have we heard this phrase, and with a sense of satisfaction in respecting human freedom, we tuck away so many of those topics of which we lie so ignorant, and away we through so precious an opportunity to share.

Here's my take. If you are ... if you would call yourself a friend, then are not the truths that you hold most dear the ones which you ever so wish to share. To search for truth together with him/her whose significance in your life is not a mere nighttime breeze - passing only through the hair.

But you argue, "Whenever I do get close to discussing, it ends up nowhere, since I do not convince them to change their mind, and they do not succeed in changing mine - and anyway, I bear no intention of doing anything of the sort."

And I respond to that "I agree that to convince the other is the nature of today's discussions, but it is not the nature of discussion."

Discussion should be an objective and truthful search for the truth, with the assumption that neither knows the end. Yet having agreed on the fundamental building blocks - the common ground which you may discover to be further than you imagined, both build up the arguement, together - pushing it like a wagon up a hill, until the result is known, or an unagreeable fact is arrived at, at which point opinion will have taken the place of fact.

And if with a Loved one the truth shall not be sought, then with whom, ... even more worryingly, then what else will you search for?

I pray that your hearts may burn BURN with a desire to exchange views in the search for truth in the most trivial facts - the building blocks of the more 'complicated' circumstances of life. Youth, at heart, youth - may you burn like a fire, burn away all fear and dark corners of your beliefs and purify your hearts and mind. Do this and life will come to be ever so beautiful - with no impurities of thought.

But I must warn, the joy will not be sustained by a pause - like a fire without firewood.

Love!