Love can make us or break us, and this is as true today as it was in the first century BC, when Virgil exclaimed, “Love conquers everything, so let us all surrender to love.”  Even a very stoic and serious person will enjoy a flirtatious comment from an attractive person. Love makes us feel wanted, cherished, and part of something larger than ourselves; it makes us feel whole. Love can give us a sense of purpose, bring out the best in us, and tug on our heartstrings in a way that can make us feel either invincible or like a turtle caught without a shell. Love goes straight to our core and will throw even the best of us for a loop.

The issues of love run deep and everyone craves it, especially in their youth. Search the internet for marriage websites like Shadi.com and you’ll find an endless number of them even promising to match your astrological chart with a perfect partner for you based on your stars and your karma. Of course, all this comes for a fee but then, in the search for love who would pass up for a mere ‘fee’, the chance to meet an anonymous person chosen at random who has the potential of being your ideal marriage partner or even your twin-soul ?

Love, marriage, relationships, all these are your Karmas. The person(s) you have met or the person you are currently with, were all with you in a past lifetime and you meet them because you both are still working out your past karmas. Now, karmas are of two types. The karma of love or the karma of hatred and both are very powerful in bringing together past-life friends as well as enemies. This is why some marriages and relationships are happy and some are totally unhappy. This is why some children give joy to their parents and some give immense sorrow. Why? Because friends as well as enemies from your past lives can incarnate through you as your children. In the case of a divorce, the relationship was a Karmic-mishap.

Love is like a fire, but whether that fire will warm your heart or burn you to ashes – you can never tell. Today’s marriages and relationships are so fragile. Today, the overdose of intolerance and adultery makes you question the sanctity of marriage.

The secret of any happy relationship is acceptance. A Chinese parable goes… a peasant had a son he cherished and a white stallion which was his most prized possession. One day, the stallion broke free and ran away. The villagers came to offer their sympathies, sad about his bad luck and sorry state of affairs. The peasant answered, “Who knows. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.” The next day his horse reappeared with a dozen wild horses in tow! Once again, the villagers came to his home, but this time they envied him, telling him what a lucky man he was. And again, he replied, “Who knows. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.” A day later, his son was trying to break one of the wild horses when he fell and broke his leg. When the villagers came to the father to express their condolences, he replied, “Who knows, Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.”

While his son was limping around the village, the Emperor’s army came and conscripted all the young men. Upon seeing the young man with a bad leg, they left him as unfit. The villagers couldn’t believe his luck and exclaimed that surely he and his father were truly blessed men. And once again, the father replied with, ” Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad.” Hence, we shouldn’t be so quick to judge situations as good or bad – what may at first appear to be a curse often turns out later as a blessing in disguise.

Virtually all relationships can have conflicts, especially in a marriage, but the secret is to love your partner when he or she is mad, happy, sad, funny, weird, embarrassing, annoying or flamboyant. Love each other unconditionally and you live happily ever after.