The Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency and many others, is now my favourite author mostly because of the deep and profound reflections usually mouthed or thought of by his rather flawed but interesting characters. They are people I can easily identify with, some of them even think like me and think of others the way I would have thought about them (which is not always the right way admittedly).
This particular lines from his Isabel Dalhousie novel, The Charming Quirks of others, is one of those thoughts that could have been my own and because I couldn't have written it better, I would love to share it:
"We do not need to look for reasons for love - it is simply there; it comes upon us without invitation, without reason sometimes; it surprises us when we are least expecting it, when we thought our hearts were closed or that we were not ready, or we imagined it would never happen to us because it had not happened before. But if I were to ask myself why I love you, or perhaps try to find what is the main cause of my being in love with you, perhaps it is because you are generous in spirit. It is not because you are beautiful, not because I see perfection in your features, in your smile, in your litheness -- all of which I do, of course I do, and have done since the moment I first met you. It is because you are generous in spirit; and may I be like that; may I become like you -- which unrealistic wish, to become the other, is such a true and revealing symptom of love, its most obvious clue, its unmistakable calling card."
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