cannot fail to love

When you are in love -- you know this, all of you -- you are not yourself. You have no self. The world is a grid of shining correspondences. And the correspondences sing like angels. You cannot defile them with your intentions. You cannot undo that order that is suddenly revealed to you. All you can do is become part of it and move in hallowed light.

Your friends make jokes about your absentmindedness. Your parents tell you you're deluded. All the people around ask you to come back to the person they know. But you are dead to them. The world has no meaning to you. Everything you once cherished is irrelevant, and you are far above it. The only truth you know is the truth around you. And you know, more than that, that whatever you love, you cannot fail to love. You can no more be argued out of your devotion than a compass can be told not to find the north, the tides instructed not to follow their moon.

Pico Iyer, Abandon