To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Loving somebody rearranges the day without asking permission. Attention keeps going where it wants to go, plans reshape themselves around another person, and what felt urgent last month goes quiet. Startling is the right word for it, because the experience arrives more like weather than like a decision.

If you are inside that, it is worth knowing the intensity is temporary and the value is not. Let it take the room it is taking, and keep one or two anchors, a friendship or a practice, so there is a life to return to when the weather settles. If you are watching somebody else go through it, patience costs you little and the world widens again on its own.