“Love, like everything else in life, should be a discovery, an adventure, and like most adventures, you don’t know you’re having one until you’re right in the middle of it.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,

To celebrate tomorrow’s holiday (known by some as  Columbus Day and by others as Indigenous Peoples Day) I chose a quote about a different kind of adventure, the discovery of love.

Ancient maps used to have these words printed where no one had returned from an adventure: “Beyond Here There Be Dragons.” Perhaps those words should be engraved in our hearts whenever we enter into a new relationship, rather a romantic one or with family or friends. Relationships are brimming with danger: the threat to our ego, the risk of reaching out, the torment of loss.

Wouldn’t you find life without the adventure of love to be shallow and sad? Though the risks are many and the pain unavoidable, the discovery of love in our lives, in every nook and cranny of our existence, breathes purpose into our days and joy into our moments.

Let’s never fear to sail into the unknown, which is the only place the discovery of love can be found.