The people who have given the ideas about love have given very wrong notions. One notion that they have given is that if you love a person then you have to love the person forever -- if it is real love. That is their criterion. If some day after ten years you find your paths separating, then the criterion that you have been carrying in the mind says, "All these ten years you were in a false love and you thought it was real."
The reality of love has nothing to do with its longevity. Is the flower not real just because by the evening it fades? Is only the rock real because it will remain tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that, because the day you were born it was there, and the day you die it will be there? Is only that rock real; and the flowers, thousands of flowers that came and disappeared, came and disappeared, were they unreal? Do you make length of time the criterion of reality? I don't see any relationship between the two. But because of this idea many people go on hanging around each others' necks because their love has to be real. They are killing each other to make the love real. If they separate that means their love was not real.
That does not mean that they have to separate to make the love real -- don't move to the opposite extreme, that you have to separate. It will depend on each individual case separately. It is possible that two persons may love their whole life without ever looking anywhere else. It is possible that one may love one person for the time being and then suddenly find that energy is no longer there.
It had come from the unknown.
It has gone to the unknown.
It was not within your power to love somebody; it is not in your power to prevent love from disappearing. You cannot do anything about it, you are simply helpless; so is the other person. Don't blame anybody. Because of the wrong idea of love, lovers go on blaming each other: "You are destroying it." Nobody is destroying it. It is a free breeze; it comes, goes -- you cannot hold it. And if you close all the windows and all the doors to hold the breeze, it is no longer the same cool breeze. Soon it will be stale as all marriages are -- stale, dull.
Both the partners are trying to escape through some place -- some window, some door -- but the other is keeping watch. The other is also trying to escape from some door but the other is keeping watch. Soon husbands and wives become each others' jailers. Love has to be for the whole of life, then only is it real -- this is stupidity. And because of this idea in the name of love, marriage had to be invented. It is a more stable thing, permanent, legal, social -- just like the rock. It is no longer a flower.

Podunk: a small, unimportant, and isolated town
¨ Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
As any Podunker will tell you, there's no such thing as a small, unimportant town. The spread of cell phones, Palm Pilots and the Internet could soon mean there will be no such thing as an isolated town, either, a development many of us find disheartening. In such an age, we're sure to treasure the many things that make a place unique - the euchre games at the Grange, the way natives say "crick" instead of "creek," the strawberry-rhubarb pie at the local diner. Podunk might even see a resurgence - as a cultural preserve where the wired man retreats to experience an America that was. Podunk is generally believed to be an Indian name, possibly meaning "lowland," and communities called Podunk do tend toward swampiness. Another theory, also associated with water, says the word mimics the sound of a mill wheel going "po-dunk," "po-dunk," "po-dunk." Over the years, city media folk have made the mistake of declaring Podunk a fictional place, only to be corrected by the masses from Podunk. There are real, if unmapped, communities across America: · Podunk, CT, in New Haven County· Podunk, MI, in Barry County· Another Podunk, MI, in Gladwin County· Podunk, VT, in Windham County· Podunk, NY, in Tompkins County Several proud Massachusetts residents have written about a Podunk, MA, which they insist is the original. It's not that we don't believe them, it's just that the U.S. Geological Survey doesn't include a Podunk, MA, in its databases. (All of the communities are geocoded, with latitude and longitude supplied by the USGS. Here's a nationwide Podunk search on the USGS Web site. Try it and you will find a Podunk Cemetery in MA.) Other manifestations of Podunk have have been relegated to history books. Podunk, WI, an abandoned hamlet in Sauk County, was once a place where farmers hauled potatoes to the trains of the North Western Railroad. The Podunk name also graces a bluegrass festival in East Hartford, CT and a rock band from Port Arthur, TX. Podunk, NY, a crossroads too small to be called a hamlet, is just a few miles away from Ithaca. (Many would have liked to locate in Podunk proper, but office space in Podunk is an oxymoron.) In the 19th century, this was a commercial center in the midst of farm country. Local enterprises made butter churns, tubs, barrels, carriages and bricks. Those days were livelier. In the 1880s, a vigilante group wearing white caps and masks tied the town highway superintendent to a tree and thrashed him for beating his wife. In 1888, a one-armed woman was murdered by a thief who set her house afire. Today, a traveler who ventures off the main road toward Bolter Creek will find a cross-country ski center, a collision shop, a few houses and a smattering of for-sale signs. The place sags a little, but it has character. And a darned good name.

Contemplate on these laws of Murphy:
First: If anything can go wrong, it will.
Second: Nothing is ever as simple as it seems.
Third: Everything takes longer than you expect.
Fourth: Left to themselves all things go from bad to worse.
Fifth: Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.
Sixth: Mother Nature is a bitch.
Seventh: It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Eighth: If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.
Ninth: If you can keep your head when, all around you, others are losing theirs, you just don't understand the situation.
And the tenth: For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution -- and it is always wrong.
Pessimism simply means looking at life negatively, always searching for the flaw, for the loophole, for something negative, and accumulating all those negativities. And when you look at the dark side, always, of course, there are two nights and only one small day sandwiched between the two nights -- dark dark nights.
Optimism ends into pessimism. Every pessimist has been an optimist once -- he is an ex-optimist. He hoped too much and because those hopes were not fulfilled he has become sour, angry, enraged. Now he cannot see the flowers and the stars. He can't see anything beautiful; he goes on looking for the ugly. And when you look for the ugly you will find it on every step. Whatsoever you look for you are bound to find it, remember, because life consists of both -- positivity and negativity -- in the same quantity. Life cannot exist without the other; the other pole is a must.
It is just like electricity. Electricity cannot exist only with one polarity, positive or negative; it has to have both the poles together. It is possible only through the tension that is created between the negative and the positive.
But there is a third kind of person -- I call that person man of tao -- who looks at life in its totality, who is neither a pessimist nor an optimist, who simply accepts life as it is; who accepts the night, who accepts the day, who accepts the rose and the thorn, because he understands that life is out of necessity dual, dialectical. And in his awareness grows a synthesis between the polar opposites. The synthesis never grows on the outside, as Karl Marx says.

It is such a beautiful circus, and changing continuously. New flowers, new seasons go on coming. It is always new. And it is always new, if one never compares anything. Yesterday is gone. Don't bring it back to compare with today. Tomorrow has not come. Who cares? It is always new, fresh. People get tired because they go on comparing. Comparison means: you have lived this thing many times, you have seen this rose flower many times; so slowly, slowly you become blind to it, you start taking it for granted. Take nothing for granted, so every moment you are ready for any surprise.
The poor man is fast asleep; otherwise he cannot tolerate his poverty. He needs deep sleep. He needs some opium given by the politicians, by the priests. His sleep is not just ordinary sleep, it is narcotic. The rich man needs no consolation from anybody. The rich man is not worried about heaven and hell. He knows he can purchase everything -- the priest, his God, his heaven, his hell -- everything can be purchased. He is not in the same situation as the poor man, he can be easily awakened. Between the poor man and me there is a great distance.
Only an ordinary man can become so certain, so clear. The extraordinary man is so much burdened with his ego, with his knowledgeability, with his schizophrenic mind, with all kinds of arguments.
There was Immanuel Kant, one of the most important philosophers of the West. A woman fell in love with him. He said, "I will have to think about it."
Now, you don't think about love -- either yes or no -- but Immanuel Kant is a big philosopher. He thought about it for three years and he managed to find all the arguments for marriage and against marriage. The trouble was, they were equal. After three years he went to the woman's house, knocked on the door. He had gone to say, "Forgive me, I cannot decide. The arguments are equal, fifty-fifty." But the woman was not there....She had already married and had three children.
And then there was Gurdjieff. He was an immensely remarkable man. In fact nobody else has been so remarkable in this century. But he was an ordinary man. He never claimed that he was a prophet. He lived just like an ordinary man, but he was most remarkable. His insight and clarity are just inconceivable.
There is no question of any superiority. It is just with whom your heart starts beating. It is just a question of liking, loving. Somebody may like Mozart and somebody may not like. Somebody may like Vincent van Gogh and somebody will think him crazy, mad.