The Lower Truth about Love
It is said that you can tell you love someone when their happiness starts to matter to you.
Joined to that is the belief that one does indeed have it in one’s power to make the person one loves happier.
Even if that belief truns out to be true in actuality, the only reason it turns out to be true is because it is God himself who wants the person you love to be happier and so enables you to do so, for whatever reason.
Because God does not intervene in this world magically and likes to hide himself, he tries to make it appear as if we are coming to each other’s aid through loving each other, and thus the world drama unfolds.
But, in our egoic mode of thinking we start believing erroneously that we are the doers, and hence also we are the ones making our beloved happier.
The Higher Truth About Love
Whatever happiness or suffering one has to encounter in one’s life, one will encounter irrespective of who loves us and who does not.
So, if one does indeed love someone, one need not be worried about that person’s happiness, and rest content that it is God who looks after every one of us, and so will also look after the ones we love, and hence leave all burdens and cares of oneself and all those we love to Him, and just devote ourselves to the pursuit of Truth, whereby we will not only secure greater happiness for the few we love but also bring about greater good of the whole of this world by our very attempt at self-realization.
Hence, forgetting this world wholly, including the ones we love, and stopping to worry about its weal and woe, including of those we love, and devoting ourself wholeheartedly to the Truth, will ensure in better measure whatever we seek to bring about through our ego-identified interventions in this world, though in the short-run it may not appear to be so. That is the perfect way to have the cake and eat it too.
Know Thyself 