I have long resisted one particular aspect of Buddhist thought; that love is a form of attachment as dangerous as any other.

Couldn't love be excepted, I thought?

A desire, no doubt, but a desire to do good, to provide a balm; if necessary to sacrifice all, selflessly to that love. What, in fact, would the world be, without such things as these?

And so this, for me, cast all renunciation into doubt, and my frame of consciousness shifted for many years.

And then, today, I saw it clearly. I had loved so long, so desperately; a hopeless love for many reasons doomed. For all it had not lessened, it was sure one day to end, and I to suffer. And yet, against all reason, this prescient sense of doom did not dissuade me, and in fact as fate's inevitability began inexorably to erode the ground beneath my feet, I could only grab tighter at the object of my love, and slowly to crush her, as we both stumbled down the slope of the growing abyss.