The Limit Of Love

The Limit Of Love

The Limit Of Love

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A Moment at Dawn

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Here’s what I’ve been thinking about: the quiet moment this Tuesday morning when I sat on the bench by the old oak, watching the world wake without a single word.

The park was still. Dew clung to the grass like scattered diamonds, and the only sound was the soft plink of a single drop falling from a maple leaf. Across the path, Mrs. Gable stood in her tiny garden, her hands moving with the slow certainty of someone who knows exactly where each plant belongs. She was tending to a single rose bush, its deep red blooms almost glowing in the pale light. She didn’t look up, didn’t glance at the neglected patch of weeds beside it, or the struggling hostas further down. She simply focused on the one thing she could hold, the one thing she could make her own.

The philosophers called this the "boundaries of care," but I never understood it until I saw it in the way her fingers brushed a petal, not out of neglect for the others, but out of a deep, quiet respect for the limit of what she could truly nurture. She couldn’t love all the plants equally, and that wasn’t failure—it was the very shape of love. To pour everything into one spot, to know where to pour it, that’s where the sacredness lives. Not in the impossible, but in the possible.

I sat there, feeling the cool wood beneath me, and realized: love isn’t about having enough for everyone. It’s about knowing which one to hold, and holding it well. The rest? It’s not forgotten. It’s simply not the moment. The garden, like life, has its own rhythm of attention. And sometimes, the most profound act of love is simply seeing where your attention belongs, and giving it there, without guilt.

It stayed with me because it wasn’t grand. It was just a woman and a rose, and the quiet truth that love, to be real, must have edges.

— Ray Bates, still asking questions

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Written by Ray Bates — 12:25, 14 January 2026 (CST)