That ache in the heart

Why does love become a priority in many people's lives? Why do people keep seeking that one true love and why do they go from one love to another like I go through handbags because they could not find in that person what they were seeking.
Have you felt it? That lovelorn feeling, that aching longing that nothing seems to assuage. an unquenchable thirst ? Sometimes for brief periods, that longing is fulfilled , only to come back twice as painful and leave you feeling twice as empty.
And the things people do to stop that ache, find a lover , indulge in food or sex , bury their heads in a book, get addicted to online games, or sports or dancing or drugs or constantly work or seek wealth . Perhaps they get totally absorbed in golf, or hunting or carouse the night away . Some seek to stave the pain via prayers or zikr or do charity work yet the pain goes away and still it returns unless one learns to numb the pain. Numbing that pain however has a price . One becomes flat , nothing is felt , life becomes flat , work is flat , family is flat and life becomes one grey blur of eating sleeping working and going through the motions. This flatness could in time become a callousness and a hardness and a harshness for one has in effect , developed a casing around the heart to protect it from the pain. In trying to be invulnerable , one loses one's humanity for that ache, that pain , that longing is not simply pain, it is a bitter sweet nectar , a passion and a prelude to a great joy that is also the human destiny.


That pain is Ishq, that pain is passion, that pain is the creative juice that pours out as poetry and art and ectsatic dancing. That pain is what moves people to greatness. There is only one great love that can remove the pain , no matter that you could not imagine it is so , and that love that will quench this thirst is what the sufis call FANA.....

Al Ghazali who wrote Alkimia Al Saadah went in search of this happiness and wrote it into his book the Alchemy of Happiness....