LOVE AND THE GAME OF MOUSETRAP

Love And The Game of Mousetrap
Love is not measured in how much we get from another person. Love is measured by what you GIVE. What you get back from them is the proof that you put love into the right person for the right reasons. Put it into the people who you truly desire in your heart, and you will have the definition of WORTH. Understand your worth and you will understand PURPOSE. Be aware of your purpose and you will come to understand BELONGING. Know where you belong, and you will see STABILITY. Be comfortable in the stability, and those who will depend on your stability can GROW. And when people grow, THEN they have love. Love is not what creates the qualities of the others. Love is what returns when you HAVE the others.
Clarity, piece of mind, and purpose come from your knowledge that nothing is real if it is not what is shown. It is ONE FOR ONE. It seems simple because when you are offered the truth without it clouded by self doubt, there IS no confusion. When it is made so "simple" it is just that. Simple. Good is a simple concept. It is often trivialized as less than worthy in the face of complexity, but complexity is a 'paper tiger' more often than not. How often have you been introduced to a product or a way of doing things that seemed so much more involved or contrived than it's original purpose?
So very often we are led to believe that some of the most basic principles of love and relationships need to be defined and orchestrated in a way that makes them a complete and total waste of time. They are the "Rube Goldberg" functionalities of a truly loving relationship, and our inability to comply with all of the necessary requirements to achieve what we feel we need, are most often attributed to failings within ourselves to live up to the expectations, without noticing that it is the ridiculous semantics; the "song & dance" of the whole escapade that makes US feel like we are doing it wrong without EVER considering the futility of the mechanics in the first place. The people trying are not failing. It is the machine that fails.
Remember the game "Mousetrap" by Milton Bradley? Basically, it was just a very complicated way to get to catch a mouse. And, as anyone remembers by playing this game knows, it rarely went smoothly.
In a proper operation, the player turns the crank, which rotates a vertical gear, connected to a horizontal gear. As that gear turns, it pushes an elastic-loaded lever until it snaps back in place, hitting a swinging boot. This causes the boot to kick over a bucket, sending a marble down a zig-zagging incline which feeds into a chute. This leads the marble to hit a vertical pole, at the top of which is an open hand, palm-up, which is supporting a larger ball. The movement of the pole knocks the ball free to fall through a hole in its platform into a bathtub, and then through a hole in the tub onto one end of a seesaw. This catapults a diver on the other end into a tub which is on the same base as the barbed pole supporting the mouse cage. The movement of the tub shakes the cage free from the top of the pole and allows it to fall. Simple. Instant mouse.
There are several points at which the mousetrap can commonly fail, though. If not built level, or if kicked too hard, the marble can fall off the incline; it can also miss the chute if not properly aligned; the contact of the marble with the pole may fail to dislodge the ball above; the ball may fail to propel the diver into the tub; the movement of the tub may be insufficient to dislodge the cage; or the cage may get stuck on the barbed pole partway down. And ANY of these results in one thing. No mouse.
Our desire to have the basic components of a fullfilled and real relationship are so very much like the ultimate goal of Mousetrap. To catch the mouse. And in most instances, it is as simple as dropping the cage over the mouse. But we get so wrapped up in collecting the pieces, and putting them where they should be,and waiting your turn, having the efforts fail to seat correctly at one part while trying to dislodge another. Even when all of the parts are assembled and everything should work, we fail to realize that the board wasn't level in the first place. And that simply results in an emotional fullfillment with the same result as a stupid, contrived, over complicated game with too many working parts that could be totally eliminated. And nost importantly, no mouse.
We get very used to playing this game. And we do so because we completely lost sight of the desire for the mouse in the first place. All of our energies diverted into trying to live up to the expectations of the game, all the requirements to have all of these supposedly critical components without ever looking at the simplicity of the end result. And in the end, feeling as though it is all just work and effort for a result that simply can not be attained. In the end we feel unworthy of the mouse, and the love it represents, if we are so ignorant as to be incapable of making a "simple" mousetrap.
But sometimes, and when you least expect it, a person comes into your life and sets themselves deep within your heart in a way that has never happened before. And it catches you totally off guard. They see inside of you the reality of love. And they want it just as much as you do. Not concerned with an outward appearance, they delve deep into the very center of you and they awaken the hope. They bare open a soul with completely unfettered desire to love you and offer you the mouse. Just the mouse.
And so you breathe in deep and immediately start to stress about how on earth you are going to play this game with a lopsided table and a boot that wont kick and a tub that never seems to catch the man. The chute simply can't lead the marble where it needs to go and you don't even know where the marble IS and it's all just going to go wrong wrong WRONG. And above all you ask yourself, "What is wrong with this person? What on earth can they see in me if I have such a faulty game and can't even build it?"
And maybe that's when the people who so desperately want and need the mouse in their lives; that little simple thing that gives meaning to all the effort, is simply set on the table and places your hand over it. No need for game whatsoever. No more finding lost pieces. No more wondering about whether you assembled it correctly. No more feeling like it is your failure to comply with the directions to earn the mouse.
With simplicity comes something that is almost ALWAYS overlooked. Simple things have incredible power. And without the myriad of components to blame the failures on, become the absolute basis for everything else. An inclined plane is simple a block of wood that displaces vertical work over a longer distance. Simple. And yet this simplicity has lifted some of the greatest monuments of stone to the heights of modern skyscrapers. A lever has only one working part, but Archimedes said "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."
Love is that simple. It is usually the misunderstanding that love is something that is to be recieved to truly have. And nothing could be further from the truth. Love is what you GIVE. And to have it in your life is to simply give it to those who would understand its worth and receive it.
So when a man comes to you with a mouse in his hand, with no desire to have you build a massive contraption before he gives it to you....
Take the mouse.