Article April 13, 1968 Issue

Love Isn't a One-way Street

[For young adults]

FEROL AUSTEN

We all know people who fall all over themselves being pleasant one day and then are unable to give us a civil greeting the next. Some individuals considered good friends turn the other way when they are needed. Human relationships can be complex and confusing, especially if friends, as well as fellow workers and fellow church members, sometimes seem to manifest some of the less lovable characteristics of human behavior.

Mrs. Eddy writes: "Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life's cup and to fill it with the nectar of the gods. We lift this cup to our lips; but it slips from our grasp, to fall in fragments before our eyes." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 9;} Then she goes on to say, "A false sense of what constitutes happiness is more disastrous to human progress than all that an enemy or enmity can obtrude upon the mind or engraft upon its purposes and achievements wherewith to obstruct life's joys and enhance its sorrow."

Relying on our mortal, material sense of man may indeed seem sweet at first, but it inevitably results in disappointment. When we like someone, and because we like him, we tend to attribute to him certain lovable characteristics and qualities. Then if he fails to live up to our high expectations, we are confused, disillusioned.

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