PARA ESPANOL CLICAR AQUI: Convención de los heridos de amor
General provisions:
A – Whereas the saying “all is fair in love and war” is absolutely correct;
B – Whereas for war we have the Geneva Convention, approved on 22 August 1864, which provides for those wounded in the battle field, but until now no convention has been signed concerning those wounded in love, who are far greater in number;
It is hereby decreed that:
Article 1 – All lovers, of any sex, are alerted that love, besides being a blessing, is also something extremely dangerous, unpredictable and capable of causing serious damage. Consequently, anyone planning to love should be aware that they are exposing their body and soul to various types of wounds, and that they shall not be able to blame their partner at any moment, since the risk is the same for both.
Article 2 – Once struck by a stray arrow fired from Cupid’s bow, they should immediately ask the archer to shoot the same arrow in the opposite direction, so as not to be afflicted by the wound known as “unrequited love”. Should Cupid refuse to perform such a gesture, the Convention now being promulgated demands that the wounded partner remove the arrow from his/her heart and throw it in the garbage. In order to guarantee this, those concerned should avoid telephone calls, messages over the Internet, sending flowers that are always returned, or each and every means of seduction, since these may yield results in the short run but always end up wrong after a while. The Convention decrees that the wounded person should immediately seek the company of other people and try to control the obsessive thought: “this person is worth fighting for”.
Article 3 – If the wound is caused by third parties, in other words if the loved one has become interested in someone not in the script previously drafted, vengeance is expressly forbidden. In this case, it is allowed to use tears until the eyes dry up, to punch walls or pillows, to insult the ex-partner in conversations with friends, to allege his/her complete lack of taste, but without offending their honor. The Convention determines that the rule contained in Article 2 be applied: seek the company of other persons, preferably in places different from those frequented by the other party.
Article 4 – In the case of light wounds, herein classified as small treacheries, fulminating passions that are short-lived, passing sexual disinterest, the medicine called Pardon should be applied generously and quickly. Once this medicine has been applied, one should never reconsider one’s decision, not even once, and the theme must be completely forgotten and never used as an argument in a fight or in a moment of hatred.
Article 5 – In all definitive wounds, also known as “breaking up”, the only medicine capable of having an effect is called Time. It is no use seeking consolation from fortune-tellers (who always say that the lost lover will return), romantic books (which always have a happy ending), soap-operas on the television or other such things. One should suffer intensely, completely avoiding drugs, tranquilizers and praying to saints. Alcohol is only tolerated if kept to a maximum of two glasses of wine a day.
Final determination:
Those wounded in love, unlike those wounded in armed conflict, are neither victims nor torturers. They chose something that is part of life, and so they have to accept both the agony and the ecstasy of their choice.
And those who have never been wounded in love will never be able to say: “I have lived”. Because they haven’t.
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Dear PAULO
Thanks for writing this.It’s totally right.
Like sugar cane,love is so sweet
But sweetness flies,like butterflies
And all is left is pain
In vain.
An agreement that seems to be forgotten when we are in the thick of it. I have been reminded therefore connot play fool once again. Thank you, Paulo.
I read this in one of your books Paulo. Anybody remind me of which one? Trying to think of it. I know I did.
Dios Los bendiga a todos :)
Reading this has cemented all of the revelations that I have been having since opening myself up to the lessons learned from the past. I have survived these wounds, and the ectsasy that comes with love…I have been living, I have the scars to prove it, but I wear those scars with pride (like the Romans who proudly displayed their facial scars on the sculptures of their leaders), I need not to fear for this inevitable, but because life has shown me that I can love, be hurt, and survive and learn the lesson well…I am ready for better things to come. I CAN love!!!! Thank you Paulo!!!
Yes, I feel a sense of satisfaction that I survived but I have to say I hate the lack of control in love. I find it frightening.
Concordo, não há vítimas nem algozes, apenas as escolhas individuais.
Acredito que as paixões e o apego trazem sofrimento. O amor deixa saudades quando a pessoa não está mais presente na nossa vida, por um motivo ou outro… mas não faz sofrer, creio eu na minha mais pura ignorância :) E, sim, o tempo é o maior aliado e bálsamo para esses casos.
Você levantou uma grande questão aqui, porque a maciça maioria crê que se algo não deu certo alguém tem que ser o “culpado” (e não a própria pessoa assumindo a responsabilidade da consequência de suas escolhas).
Obrigada pela reflexão dominical :)
Grande abraço, Sr. Paulo.
and what about trusting truth in realationships? if your partner has grown to the point where they understand that cheating/lying is not of benefit to them or you, because of the effects deceit has on both of your souls, and therefore no longer chooses to betray, then you have a wise man or woman as a partner
I do know people, including men, whose well thought out and considered values (at least so far) have stopped them from betraying another, those values are thought out values, not just ones passed down from culture,
my partnner is one, i trust him implicitely, to tell me the truth, its his deepest value, so it would be hard for him not to
If he did cheat that would not be part of life, it would be him betraying his word and soul
if he did, i would probably forgive, knowing his depth and integrity, and lack of judgement on these matters i would be very surprised though.
if you deeply love another, then of course you can love another after that, anything less than truth about what you are doing though means that one of the partners is acting from fear
I think Loyalty to one’s partner is a demonstration of just how authentic and special that love is.
How unfortuneate to be less than truthful, not worthy, less than thankful for having someone so special.
To love I think you have to be very strong and wise. If you are not, if you are in love with yourself, or not willing to take the good with the difficult than you shouldn’t be a privileged signing member of such a convention.
I would, however, like to suggest a clause for long distance realtionships. Just kidding.
Well said! :) I say it this way…
“True strength is found in the heart. It is to smile when in pain. To turn the other cheek when betrayed, Hold your tongue when angered, To keep faith when things are difficult.” -”T”
Many may see such behavior as “weakness”, when in fact, it takes tremendous strength in “character” to achieve.
Truly,
Love makes us do amazing things. It surpasses anything beyond imagination and leaves no trace behind except, some sequence of images passed by. If only, I wonder, if only people could love more and not get tired so easily…………..
Best wishes to all the new lovers and of course to the ones who have been for a long time.
Thanks Mr.Paulo Coelho for this amazing refreshment of Love;
well then i can say that i have never lived yet, i cant take risks when it come to my heart..i’m not much of a risk taker, especially in the heart matters,they are unpredictable, very hard to fix afterward and are not sane :) i can’t go in something with a chance of getting hurt where it hurts the most…but i put all my love to life and all people not to only one, does that counts?
uummhhh…its great advice to all disputes goin all around the world related to love and marriages….but it is not worth saying “anyone planning to love should be aware that they are exposing their body and soul to various types of wounds”….sometimes we say love is the best medicine to have….your angle of thinking is very much considerable to fix and saving t he marriages…
but it can frighten those who are seeking for there love…
it is good to have such a nice piece of article…thank you..
true.very true
It’s all so true, but I am confused with next to the last line in article 5: ‘avoid drugs, tranqulizers and praying to saints’ It’s good to avoid first two things but what about praying to saints? I presumed that this mean that we should pray to saints, but could you please reassure me?
Kind regards.
So true and sometimes so hard to do…the battle between heart and head. The strength to do it takes training and the only way to get the training is to love and live even if it is not returned.
It’s all so true, but I am confused with next to the last line in article 5: ‘avoid drugs, tranqulizers and praying to saints’ It’s good to avoid first two things but what about praying to saints? I presumed that this mean that we should pray to saints, but could you please reassure me?
Kind regards.
you may pray to calm your soul, but not to demand someone back to you
I love this! If only they got junior high school kids to sign off on this before their hormones took over! I certainly would have been saved a lot of heartache.
Yes Adryenn Ashley! Now seeing that I need to talk about this with a pre-teen too.
I had a false sense of security once, and a shock when the time came, to go. It took a while to understand that the decision to part was out of love.
Sometimes, love is easy. But who will love me when it is not easy? Who will walk beside me until death?
But I just love (only fell in love once). Love never dies.
Actually, was thinking today, how beautiful it is when a couple stays together, because they want to. Because they love and like each other, as people. Their togetherness is a cherished gift and paths, time and again, lead them back to each other.
I so wish and hope that Paulo’s Convention of those Wounded In Love, and the writings of Rumi and Kahlil Gibran were also studied and discussed in high schools (had not read any of these three, until last year. Yet, fits with how I live. Now, I no longer feel like the strangest Canadian on the planet).
Just looked at the date of your entry here…I was with family that month, and this date is a son’s birthday!
Thanks again Adryenn,
Love, Jane : )
you are a great writer n a very wise guy :):)
Dear Paulo, this is really great fiction to give a matter a new frame that does not have the moral imperative. My regards makaio
Being with friends really does help. To support us in our time of need, not as a distraction, when going through this human experience. Yet, we are responsible for ourselves in this game called love or unrequited love. I suppose there’s a need for a balance of give and take, and that both people are neither predator or prey. Thank you for sending this message of the heart.
Love,
Angey
Beautiful.
Thank you
Yes, a prayer to this wounded family, and all wounded lovers who struggle to understand this bliss driving us to act beyond conventions, to find these emotions of being alive and happy. As our compassion goes to Ms Elin Wood, so it goes to Mr Tiger Wood. Here is another angle to a Convention of those wounded in love;
‘Thus the old adage that “marriage is to women what war is to men” could be true in the realm of social representation yet false in the realm of institutional realities. Strictly speaking, marriage was indispensable only to men, and it was exclusively for them that the city instituted it. but let us leave that question aside for the moment. the point is that making inequality and exclusion the criteria for understanding male-female relations in the ancient world not only excludes women from public life but at the same time excludes sexual division from the realm of politics and law. But Nicole Loraux’s work on the autochthonous religion of Athens shows how deeply the Greeks thought about the origins of sexual differentiation and how hard they triedto overcome it in their myths.
Sexual division in Rome was a legal construct, not a fact of nature. It is therefore difficult to explain woman’s legal inferiority without examining how sexual division affected Rome’s central legal institution: the law of kinship and inheritance. Generally speaking, the legal status of males and females cannot e explained simply by saying that certain polities and societies were more favorable to sexual equality, others less favorable. It is misleading to treat equality as a measurable parameter and to write the history of women as a series of advances and retreats on this front. Equality itself needs to be historicized. Statues define a legal architecture within which differences are constructed, and it is with this construction of differences that history needs to be concerned. This narrowing of the question alters the object of investigation. No longer is the aim to understand the exclusion of women from an alien world. Nor is it even to explain their slow and partial integration into a man’s world…The problem is to explain how the law shaped relations between men and women and to show how statues concerning women illustrate their complementary role in a system defined by the rights of men.’ A History of Women, Pauline Schmitt Pantel
The system causes us to be wounded in love, it’s not even the fault of any action of individuals, but of an narrow minded inherited way of thinking about love.
Love to all, men & women,
Heart
You have something here Marvelous Marit.
Boy, the relationships between men and women, especially in the work place, would be different had women not be excluded for so long. Both would definitely be more at ease when dialoguing with each other. I could certainly go for that one. Though I wonder how the physical states of men and women be with us so equal. Would women on an average be bigger and more muscular? Would they suffer as many heart attacks as men?
Love ya,
Lainee
You could’nt have said it better. Feel like reading it again and again….Bravo! Mr. Coelho.
I have never been in love. And according to this article, I’ve never lived…
BUT as I‘ve mentioned it before, the Year of 2010 is the Year of the Tiger, and it begins on February 14th when Valentine day is also. So, to Elin Woods: „Don’t count the days… In just two days, tomorrow will be yesterday, and Love will come – to you & ME.”
Much Love,
Ilva
Hmmmm Very interesting! :)))
Love
Olta
Thank you for that info Ilva, it’s very interesting for me because I was born in the year of the Tiger. I shall look it up for more info.
Kisses
C.
Dear Ilva,
I wish the same to you as I wished Annie. I didn´t see
that yours was the original comment.
Love comes when you least expect it and as they say
when you don´t look for it you´ll find it or it´ll find
you ;-)
Lots of love,
Vicky
1] I have never been in love…
2] Tennyson: better to have loved and lost /Than never to have loved at all.
The gift of insult.
Unfortunately, I’m not a great Samurai warrior. Moreover, I do not have my katana, BUT I have tsuba (decorated with plums, not silly cherries) & I will not allow somoeone to strike me down.
———
Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place, for all those who take the sword will die by the sword” /Matthew 26:52/
———
I have naver been in love in this my life. The wonder is that I can remember some of my previous lifes, and I ‘remember’ how it is to love ‘one special man’ (Note: I was not talking here about love to people or nature in general).
True love doesn’t die, and it doesn’t judge. But today THAT love is like a candlelight – very warm memories of the wonderful romance. Just the heart dreams to jump into a bonfire…
Thanks for your words, Paulo.
:)
very wonderful words, about the third parties though, when they have stepped in between for reasons of greed, and now the two people that were tore apart are trying reconcile, when the greed in the situation has set up road blocks what would you suggest then
amazing….so inspiring
i guess, i was starting to live…
Great piece of writing. I happened to come across the tweet at just the right time in life! I love your books Mr Coelho, they’ve seen me through some trying times. l Iook forward to reading more. Thanks a million for all your beautiful work.
WELL SAID! :) But that does not make it necessarily easier for the “wounded”
wow, this is great stuff.
thank you for reminding me this again .:)
Just what I needed.. :( it’s hard being wounded, especially when you still keep on fighting, try to endure the wounds, but never know if you’ll still live tomorrow :(
Wow!
Starts off brilliantly, and gets better with each passing line!!
Wow…I’ve read this before and it still gets to me. We’ve all been wounded at one time or the other…
BRAVO!!!!!!!!!! I love you, Mr. Coelho! :)
Just realised how very very much I HAVE LIVED! :-) Feel Blessed to have had these men in my life. They have taught me so much. I wear my scars with pride! They are the signs of my healing XXX
I guess this is one of my favorite texts since I am following your blog and reading your books. I’ll print it and put that in my room so it can comfort me when I take difficult decisions. Thanks a million times for sharing with us…
hilarious take. but how true. thank you
i feel so concerned!
LOVE it :)
hmm. sounds soothing. as one of the wounded ones by that “definitive wound”,your words are good advice. :)
:-)
I totally agree. Amazing thoughts :)
I enjoyed reading this “Convention of those wounded in love”, it is clever of course, and oh so true. I guess if you can’t take the heat (of love), stay out of the kitchen! I look forward to reading your blog so much…and your tweets! Obrigada…a tel logo…Do you have any blogs regarding how to get back into the game after a long hiatus (i.e. on finding your soulmate, if there is such a thing?)
How about the indefinite wounds that love causes, for ever and for worst, forever unhappy, unable to leave in the name of love?
cheer up tanya! Don’t be bitter with life and love.
Live means living, loving and laughing it all out. Sorrows and bitterness will be there but then as what they say we can always find goodthings in something. Just like a broken glass if you pointed it out towards the light you can see a rainbow just be careful not to cul yourself though, lol!
Brilliant and laugh-out-loud funny at times!
Thank you for writing this and then sharing it with us!
You put words to my thoughts and feelings around love, intimacy and the (seemingly) limited choice in who your heart chooses to love.
Maya
(totally agree that the two glasses of wine is an exception)
and that’s the way love goes…
Interesting, how love can inflict wound. Is it love, or is it possessiveness? I do not think true love causes wound. Wound is caused by feeling of losing, which is result of possessiveness. Love, in the other hand, is infinite.
Thank God: I have lived! I AM LOVE.
LOVE,
Thelma xxx
Dearest Paulo
You are amazing.
Thank you for reminding.
Lots of love
Adriana
That makes a lot of sense.
Thank you!
I’m glad the blog is working well now,it’s easier to comment!
It’s exactly the way it works :)
Dear God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…
Best Paulo. I’ll sign this at once…. Where? And also I will pray and meditate and hug a tree – all of which helps a bit when I feel hurt and left all by myself. Which we truly all are. Alone. Well, Connected, but by ourselves. Wen.
You have come to my life for a reason. Right now. The loss of my loved one has been unbearable. But your words and books are slowly digging me out of the hole. I am not sure I believe in much, I know that the sun shines, and the earth moves and I breath the air. That much I know and that is why I am still here.
I know the cartoon, and I just wish that some time at least once he could catch him. Just once! hahhahah…
And about ego, there’s nothing to do about it but controlling it heheheh…
I don’t know Annie if you have ever seen the American movie Greek wedding, or at least this is the way it is translated in Albanian, word by word I mean.
There is the Greek mother who says to her daughter. “Man might be the head of the family but the wife is the neck.” hihihi so mean but true! ;)
I wish you will fall in love with someone wou will really like Annie !
Hugs and Love
Olta
Annie, you’re a wonderful person.
I hope you’ll find someone who will give you his all,
someone with whom you can share equally, someone
that values your inner beauty.
Don’t settle for less ;-)
Lots of love,
Vicky
or..
Lord grant the gift to give my best in everything that i do but when my best still fails help me to accept the outcome of my doing.
Dear Ilva,
Candlelights are of great value, but don’t forget
to allow the sun into you’re life as well…
Lots of love,
Vicky
Dear Ilva, YES, agree with you!!
The gift of insult has been dancing in my heart since reading for the first time.
And I was talking to grandson about this story at Christmas time. I got to the part of where does the gift belong?
He did not need the ending to the story. He told me the rest!! And, is only 12 years old. This will help him so much, a very sensitive soul.
“True love doesn’t die and it doesn’t judge”.
I do believe this is so, when true love is present.
Understanding and compassion.
Thank you Ilva, Love, jane : )
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