Possesion Vs. Love

From Maria's Diary extracted from Paulo Coelho's Elevan Minutes

Once upon a time, there was a bird. he was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colourful, marvellous feathers. In short, he was a creature made to fly about freely in the sky, bringing joy to everyone who saw him.One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him.

She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart punding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her and the two travelled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird. And she felt envy for the bird's ability to fly. And she felt alone. And she thought "I'm going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears he will never leave again"

The bird who was also in love returned the following morning, fell into the trap and was put in a cage. She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said "Now you have everything you could possibily want." However a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird unable to fly and express the true meaning of life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out the cage.

One day the bird died. The woman felt horribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember tha cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time flying contentedly amongst the clouds.If she had looked more deeply into herself, she would have realized that what had thrilled her about the bird was his freedom, the energy of his wings in motion, not his physical body.

Without the bird her life too lost all meaning and Death came to her door. "Why have you come?" she asked Death. "So that you can fly once more with him across the sky" Death replied. "If you had allowed him to come and go, you would have loved and admired him even more; alas you now need me to find him again."

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An afterthought:How many of us have died over and over just like the bird? How many of us like the woman had not come to realization until the bird is no longer alive? Some times the bird may not end up dead but it doesn't necessarily mean that he is alive.

POSSESSION CAN NEVER BE JUSTIFIED BY LOVE but by the time most of us realize it it's too late........