QUOTE : I must admit, however, that this is mostly a book of guesses—as any book on love must be. My guess is that loving is what we are here for, that love is what every one of us deserves to receive and is here to give, that love alone makes this earth the heaven it was meant to be. The guess turns into a conundrum when we realize that so many of us prefer the signs that point to heaven over heaven itself. We yearn for and talk about the love we want. We lament the love we have been deprived of. Yet we sometimes fail to take the steps that can help it happen for us.<br />The puzzle becomes even more confounding when we sometimes prefer the hell of no love at all, which we bring on by our own unskillful choices or by our endurance of abuse or betrayal, especially from those who say they love us. This book proposes that love is real when we dare to become as loving as we can be toward ourselves and others and as careful as we can be not to confuse a history with someone or a connection that does not work for us with true love.