"I seek you" by Erik Pevernagie, oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm  xx

Encounters may help us discover our inner world, reveal us to ourselves and unshackle us from prejudices, but still, they can disrupt our thinking patterns when they make us too dependent or needy. However, if they give voice to our life choices and offer inner freedom, they inspire and enlighten us.

We may be fascinated by the temptations of random encounters. Still, randomness can upset us by the pertinacity of our habits, actuating warning signals or panic buttons in our minds and preventing us from opening up to others. If we want to meet others and, even so, better understand how we are wired and what makes us tick, we must cultivate our tastes and tame the flavors of our lifestyle.

When love stealthily settles down in our inner world as we dwell through fields of expectations with eyes wide open, unfurling sceneries of wonderment gently unroll on our path and overwhelm our mindset.

Love can be challenging, with an illusion emanating an aura of otherness. Two smitten persons can arouse a to and fro conveyance of sentiments through their unrelenting attention. The go-between of emotions becomes a weighty sovereign messenger that gradually becomes a third partner of a "ménage à trois" union.

With a single stroke, the butterfly's wing beat of love can engender a mystical attraction in the neural meanders of the mind and generate an emotional torment.

Let us find inner freedom in each lucky moment we encounter, like a sun-basking butterfly that finds peace on a cherry blossom petal.

When we take the trouble to look at what is unfolding in front of our eyes, we can recognize instances awakening the hidden knowledge slumbering on our inner world's fringes. If we fuel our imagination, new and old essentials can converge to a dawning awareness.

We know what a missing person means in one’s life. The whole world may seem to be deserted. French poets have struggled with that feeling. “Only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.” (Lamartine)

For many, the World Wide Web is an excellent help in finding emotional support. Advanced literacy courses are even provided, which may help find soul mates. However, love seems often to be illiterate; whether we write it big or small, we cannot read it all the time. It may sometimes be a guess.

According to William Butler Yeats, we must be gentle and careful, like when he thought he had found a soul mate, Maud Gonne, in 1889. He did not write emails but used a poem and "spread his dreams under her feet" and asked her to " tread softly" when treading "on his dreams." But Maud Gonne did not "tread softly" because Yeats said later: "She filled my days with misery." Love had disappointed him, but in 1916, 27 years later, he felt he "was made for loving" her daughter Iseult Gonne, who had to share other inspiring characters like Ezra Pound and Rabindranath Tagore.

So, Man Ray told his model Lee Miller in 1929, "I was made for loving you,” but Lee was made for loving Henry Moore, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Antoni Tàpies, and Paul Éluard as well.

Thus, eternal love is a gracious phenomenon but often remains a temporary concern.

When love bites the dust, we must learn to recognize the demons of our failures.

Phenomenon: Love and expectation

Factual starting point: Young lady engaged with internet, confronting @