Love, after all, is the thing that brings us into this world, ties us together, and makes the days pass more pleasantly. Don’t we love to live and live to love? And aren’t all the best songs love songs? Yet, offering up love as a balm to life’s problems feels cheap. We’re often skeptical, understandably so, that love alone can save us from issues like debt, disease, and desolation. In Gold, Rumi speaks to our inner skeptics. Line by line, he tries to show us how love only helps and never hurts. “If you plunge like a fish into Love’s ocean,” he asks, “what will happen?”

Rumi reminds us that there are two distinct versions of ourselves: the self that exists in our minds and the self that we show to the world. He wants us to reconcile these halves by loving the inner self, the part we hide away, until we only have one face to show. Rumi believes we can free ourselves from self-imposed restraints. Just as, “A lion leaps out of his cage. / A man leaps out of his mind.” Still, he acknowledges that being kind to ourselves isn’t always easy. Perhaps one reason we’re hesitant to accept love as a solution is that we’re not properly trained in it. Love isn’t a feeling, but an action that we must consciously make and consciously keep. 

“Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?” — Rumi