As I wrote my book of quotes, I was inspired with the words: "Love is a rose that blossoms when expressed, and wilts when trapped in a mind with no windows or doors."
In the subsequent years after writing these words, the Universe gently reaffirmed their truth through a series of personal reflections and encounters.
Recently, I had the joy of catching up with several of my childhood friends. Now, as adults, we speak with a freedom and emotional openness that we rarely had in our younger years. During one of these conversations, a girl I had always been fond of shared something that caught me completely by surprise: she had harbored deep feelings of affection and admiration for me back then but was simply too shy to express them at the time. Hearing this left me with a quiet sense of lost opportunity—realizing that because her sentiments remained silent, we missed the chance to build shared memories that could bring a smile to our faces to this day. It was a poignant reminder that unexpressed affection leaves both sides at a loss, for love cannot flourish when kept locked away inside our thoughts, whatever our reasons may be.
This lesson became even clearer through the experience of a dear friend of mine from Venezuela, whom I met in Spain back in 2000. Let us call her Maria. Having lost her parents at an early age, Maria had spent much of her life yearning to feel a deeper connection to them. One day, a relative revealed a forgotten memory from her parents' youth: during their courtship, long before Maria was born, they had traveled to Spain and visited the jagged mountain outlooks of Montserrat near Barcelona.
Driven by a profound desire for closure, Maria made it her mission to travel to Montserrat and seek out this physical trace of her family’s past. High at the peak of the mountain sat a wooden outlook deck where the vast valley stretched all the way to the horizon. Tucked directly behind this deck were massive, weather-worn boulders where travelers over the decades had carved their own messages of love. Standing before those stone walls, Maria began sifting through countless names and dates etched into the rock. Suddenly, her heart leaped with joy as her eyes caught a familiar inscription—the beautiful message of deep, sincere love carved by her father for her mother, roughly fifty years earlier.
Standing on that mountain deck, she wept openly as a deep sense of relief washed over her. In that single moment, reading her father's written words across the span of half a century, she knew beyond any doubt that she was the child of a pure, enduring love.
Her father’s gesture showed me the timeless power of expressing what we feel. A simple message written decades ago reached across time to heal a daughter's heart today. So many of us carry immense affection for others yet fail to say the words, leaving the people we care about guessing where they stand.
My dear friends, love needs expression to survive and flourish. Whether spoken, written, or shown through simple acts, expressing our feelings is the only way to give love room to bloom.
I leave you today with this gentle invitation to reflect: Is there someone in your life who needs to hear what is in your heart today?©️ Amyn Dahya
Have a blessed week ahead, my dear friends, graced with peace, happiness, and an abundance of love in your life...
Amyn Dahya