This is love.
And so there are some who spend their whole lives seeking. Sometimes 
giving, sometimes taking. Sometimes chasing. But often, just waiting. 
They believe that love is a place that you get to: a destination at the 
end of a long road. And they can’t wait for that road to end at their 
destination. They are those hearts moved by the movement of hearts. 
Those hopeless romantics, the sucker for a love story, or any sincere 
expression of true devotion. For them, the search is almost a lifelong 
obsession of sorts. But, this tragic ‘quest’ can have its costs—and its’
 gifts.
The path of expectations and the ‘falling in love with love’ is a 
painful one, but it can bring its own lessons. Lessons about the nature 
of love, this world, people, and one’s own heart, can pave this often 
painful path. Most of all, this path can bring its own lessons about the
 Creator of love.
Those who take this route will often reach the knowledge that the human love they seek was 
not
 the destination. Some form of that human love, can be a gift. It can be
 a means. But the moment you make it the End, you will fall. And you 
will live your whole life with the wrong focus. You will become willing 
to sacrifice the Goal for the sake of the means. You will give your life
 to reaching a ‘destination’ of worldly perfection that does not exist.
And the one who runs after a mirage, never gets there; but keeps 
running. And so too will you keep running, and be willing to lose sleep,
 cry, bleed, and sacrifice precious parts of yourself—at times, even 
your own dignity. But you’ll never reach what you’re looking for in this
 life, because what you seek isn’t a worldly destination. The type of 
perfection you seek cannot be found in the material world. It can only 
be found in God.
That image of human love that you seek is an illusion in the desert 
of life. So if that is what you seek, you’ll keep chasing. But no matter
 how close you get to a mirage, you never touch it. You don’t own an 
image. You can’t hold a creation of your own mind.
Yet, you will give your whole life, still, to reaching this ‘place’. 
You do this because in the fairy tale, that’s where the story ends. It 
ends at the finding, the joining, the wedding. It is found at the 
oneness of two souls.
 And everyone around you will make you think that 
your path ends there: at the place where you meet your soul mate, your 
other half—at the point in the path where you get married. Then and only
 then, they tell you, will you ever finally be complete. This, of 
course, is a lie because completion cannot be found in anything other 
than God.
But the lesson you’ve been taught since the time you were little—from
 every story, every song, every movie, every ad, every well-meaning 
auntie—is that you aren’t complete otherwise. And if—God forbid—you are 
one of the ‘outcasts’ who haven’t gotten married, or have been divorced,
 you are considered deficient or incomplete in some way.
The lesson you’re taught is that the story ends at the wedding, and 
then that’s when Jennah (paradise) begins. That’s when you’ll be saved 
and completed and everything that was once broken will be fixed. The 
only problem is, that’s not where the story 
ends. That’s where 
it begins. That’s where the building starts: the building of a life, the
 building of your character, the building of sabr, patience, 
perseverance, and sacrifice.
The building of selflessness. The building 
of love.
And the building of your path back to Him.
But if the person you marry becomes your ultimate focus in life, your
 struggle has just begun. Now your spouse will become your greatest 
test. Until you remove that person from the place in your heart that 
only God should be, it will keep hurting. Ironically, your spouse will 
become the tool for this painful extraction process, until you learn 
that there are places in the human heart made only by—and for—God.
Among the other lessons you may learn along this path—after a long 
road of loss, gain, failure, success, and so many mistakes—is that there
 are at least 2 types of love. There will be some people you love 
because of what you 
get from them: what they 
give you, the way they make you 
feel.
 This is perhaps the majority of love—which is also what makes much of 
love so unstable. A person’s capacity to give is inconstant and 
changing. Your response to what you are given is also inconstant and 
changing. So if you’re chasing a feeling, you’ll always be chasing.  No 
feeling is ever constant. If love is dependent on this, it too becomes 
inconstant and changing. And just like everything in this world, the 
more you chase it, the more it will run away from you.
But, once in a while, people enter your life that you love—not for what they give you—but for what they 
are.
 The beauty you see in them is a reflection of the Creator, so you love 
them. Now suddenly it isn’t about what you’re getting, but rather what 
you can 
give. This is unselfish love. This second type of love 
is the most rare. And if it is based in, and not competing with, the 
love of God, it will also bring about the most joy. To love in any other
 way is to need, to be dependent, to have expectations—all the 
ingredients for misery and disappointment.
So for all those, who have spent their life seeking, know that purity
 of any thing is found at the Source. If it is love that you seek, seek 
it through God. Every other stream, not based in His love, poisons the 
one who drinks from it. And the drinker will continue to drink, until 
the poison all but kills him. He will continue to die more and more 
inside, until he stops and finds the pure Source of water.
Once you begin to see everything beautiful as only a reflection of 
God’s beauty, you will learn to love in the right way: for His sake. 
Everything and everyone you love with be for, through and because of 
Him. The foundation of such love is God. So what you hold onto will no 
longer be just an unstable feeling, a fleeting emotion. And what you 
chase will no longer be just a temporary high. What you hold, what you 
chase, what you love, will be God: the *only* thing stable and constant.
 Thereafter, everything else will be through Him. Everything you give or
 take or love or don’t love, will be by Him. Not by your nafs. It will 
be for Him. Not for your nafs.
This means you will love what He loves and not love what He does not 
love. And when you do love, you will give to the creation—not for what 
you can get in return 
from them. You will love and you will 
give, but you will be sufficed from Him. And the one who is sufficed by 
God, is the richest and most generous of all lovers. Your love will be 
by Him, for Him, and because of Him. That is the liberation of the self 
from servitude to any created thing. And that is freedom. That is 
happiness.
That is love.
Yasmin Mogahed.