Give and Get

I will look at a topic I have covered a number of times before from different angles.
It is love and I have come across a number of quotes concerning it.  I admit I am liking what I am reading even though, as is the nature of quotes, it jumps from one thing to another.
“True love begins when nothing is looked for in return” said Antoine De Saint-Exupery.  I personally think that one encapsulates so much concerning love.
It’s funny, we were mentioning in passing last night the value of giving rather than getting.  The consensus was that so often to get one must give. It is what I have found so often.  When love is given without the expectation of return or even the possibility of return, it tends to do heaps for me.  I find myself on the receiving end by being on the giving end.  So often I am helped by helping another.
I have found this to be the case in moments of crisis and personal need.  Of course my own need is not forgotten and sometimes it is front and centre.  Yet often, when I forget my need in the pursuit of meeting another’s, mine is met. 
No wonder a Creole proverb says, “tell me whom you love, and I’ll tell you who you are.”   There is definitely in my mind a self-love that is healthy.  After all I do not think I can love you without loving myself.  Yet I really think there is an unhealthy self-love that is centred on meeting the needs of the “lover” without thought or consideration for others.  No wonder Hector Blancotti said, “so many catastrophes in love are only accidents of egotism.”
To me putting myself first can be a recipe for disaster.  It is only when I deem the needs of another to be something for us concentually to work on together, that I find the release I may be seeking.
Love can have many faces, but without fail, I know it when I see it.