The Forty Rules of Love

“The water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall.”

First and foremost, this book is about characters learning to navigate challenging moments in their lives. For Shams, this is confronting his own death, which he has seen again and again in his visions. For Rumi, this means leaving behind the certainty of scholarly life to seek truth more broadly. Ella must learn not to fear change and renewal, and give up the stale life to which she has come to feel only marginally connected.

“I hunt everywhere for a life worth living and a knowledge worth knowing. Having roots nowhere, I have everywhere to go.”

Here, Shams discusses that when he is freed from planning and thinking of the future, he is freed of commitments to a place and time and thus can be open to the rest of the world and new experiences.

“Submission is a form of peaceful acceptance of the terms of the universe, including the things we are currently unable to change or comprehend.”

In this moment, Ella reflects on Aziz’s comments about submission and treating that acceptance of the inevitable as an opportunity to grow, rather than actively fighting against something that cannot be undone. By accepting her circumstances and her unhappiness, by submitting to those feelings rather than fighting them, Ella is then able to forge a life for herself based on acceptance.

“‘Intellect and love are made of different materials,’ he said. ‘Intellect ties people in knots and risks nothing, but love dissolves all tangles and risks everything. Intellect is always cautious and advises, ‘Beware too much ecstasy,’ whereas love says, ‘Oh, never mind! Take the plunge!’ Intellect does not easily break down, whereas love can effortlessly reduce itself to rubble. But treasures are hidden among ruins. A broken heart hides treasure.”

This is the crux of Ella’s struggle throughout the text—learning how to live from the heart instead of the head. After years of playing it safe, her leap of faith in going after Aziz in the first place is the epitome of taking the plunge. Further, it forces her to realize that her marriage to her husband, David, is largely loveless and held together for the sake of the larger family unit.

“Most of the problems of the world stem from linguistic mistakes and simple misunderstandings. Don’t ever take words at face value. When you step into the zone of love, language as we know it becomes obsolete. That which cannot be put into words can only be grasped through silence.”

Here, Aziz advises Ella as to what to do during a disagreement with her daughter about her daughter’s impending marriage. The idea of thinking more deeply and purposefully about what is being said is part of both Ella and Aziz’s portion of the novel and the portion belonging to Shams and Rumi. However, whether or not one can apply this same idea to all of the characters in the Shams-Rumi portion of the novel is open to debate. Desert Rose, for example, has problems that don’t stem from “linguistic mistakes” and instead from suffering physical and sexual abuse from men.

“Believers are each other’s mirrors.”

Although Rumi is opulent and Shams is rustic, and Rumi is a scholar while Shams is a wanderer, the two are the same in all of the most fundamental ways and learn from the things that are opposite about them. They are able to do this because they both believe in something larger than themselves.

“Loneliness and solitude are two different things. When you are lonely, it is easy to delude yourself into believing that you are on the right path. Solitude is better for us, as it means being alone without feeling lonely. But eventually it is best to find a person, the person who will be your mirror. Remember, only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself and the presence of God within you.”

Ella’s life is defined by loneliness; even spots that should be full of love and joy are empty, especially when her husband does not come home. When Aziz and Ella began their correspondence, they become mirrors to one another, sharing thoughts and reflecting ideas. In this way, Ella begins to better understand herself and challenges Aziz to think about his past more deeply.

“Only in another person’s heart can you truly see yourself.”

Characters consistently compare themselves to others in the novel in order to understand their differences and, ultimately, in order to change. Ella looks to the way that Aziz lives his life in order to see how meaningless and unimportant her own existence has become, and how far removed from her goals she is. Rumi has a similar revelation; by looking at Shams, he is able to see the ways in which he has wasted time and reveled in excess, as opposed to honing himself and his work into something that will benefit others.

“Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you.”

When Aziz dies, it would be easy for Ella to travel down a path of despair. The same thing can be said for Rumi, after Shams’s death. Instead, both Ella and Rumi take the lessons they learn from their respective comrades and move through life with the lessons as maps to new paths, exploring and being present while still remembering.

“Patience does not mean to passively endure. It means to be farsighted enough to trust the end result of a process. What does patience mean? It means to look at the thorn and see the rose, to look at night and see the dawn.”

While Ella endures her life with her husband, it seems as though she is merely biding her time after she begins her flirtation with Aziz. What had once plagued her thoughts and concerned her now seemed trivial; this is typified by Ella’s lack of engagement or interest in her husband when previously she would have been thrilled. For Ella, part of the process was being patient and not constantly planning for the future.

“The midwife knows that when there is no pain, the way for the baby cannot be opened and the mother cannot give birth. Likewise, for a new Self to be born, hardship is necessary.”

In every relationship in the book, there is a breaking point. Ella’s is perhaps the most profound of them all; while it was painful for her to break up her family and be ostracized, in order for Ella to be born anew and get out of the life that only dragged her down, she had to go through the pain of upsetting the people she cared about, even when it meant having her heart broken by Aziz’s death.

“East, West, South or North makes little difference. No matter what your destination, just be sure to make every journey, a journey within. If you travel within, you’ll travel the whole wide world and beyond.”

In terms of Ella’s life, the journey at the beginning of the novel seems to be on the outside—her life is consumed by satisfying her children and her husband with material things or dictating their lives. The journey within, however, defines the second half of the book; Ella looks inward and focuses on her own life and choices and redefines what is important to her. This look within means that Ella is able to find true happiness and satisfaction where before there was only disappointment and frustration.

“Try not to resist the changes that come your way. Instead let life live through you. And do not worry that your life is turning upside down. How do you know that the side you are used to is better than the one to come?”

This is the central message of those who encounter Shams and have issues with his ways: Rather than opening their minds and considering this new way of doing things, they instead adhere to their books and see Shams and his new way of thinking as a threat.

“Which is how I think of faith—like a hidden rose garden where I once roamed and inhaled its perfumed smells but can no longer enter. I want God to be my friend again. With that longing I am circling that garden, searching for an entrance, hoping to find a gate that will let me in.”

A major theme of almost every characters’ story arc is the act of waiting or aspiring for something. For Shams, the waiting is for the right time to meet Rumi; for Aladdin, it’s finding the right opportunity to get rid of the man who he believes is twisting the mind of his father. Ella waits for Aziz and Aziz awaits what he imagines to be his second death.

“Behind all hardships was a larger scheme. I couldn’t make it out clearly, but I could feel it with my whole heart.”

The notion that the end will justify the means is a central and repeated message in the text. Ella must undergo a period of pain and strife in order to find love and feel alive again; Shams must ultimately sacrifice himself in order to change the hearts and minds of the people who doubted him and found him to be nothing but a nuisance. Rumi had to remove himself from the people he loved and from his adoring fans in order to seek truth and become more connected to his work. All of these characters endeavor through the hardship in order to access the larger and more fundamental parts of their lives.

“In the Jewish quarter of Konya, in a tavern owned by a Christian, we, a mixed bunch of wine lovers of all faiths, raised our glasses and toasted together, hard though it was to believe, to a God who could love and forgive us even when we ourselves clearly failed to do so.”

In the midst of all the strife between Rumi and his family, as well as that brought on by Shams, this moment in the tavern, where all different faiths can join together, highlights a glimmer of hope in a city otherwise plagued by disagreement and frustration with each other’s beliefs.

“Some people start life with a perfectly glowing aura but then lose color and fade. You seem to be one of them. Once your aura was whiter than lilies with specks of yellow and pink, but it faded over time. Now it is a pale brown. Don’t you miss your original colors? Wouldn’t you like to unite with your essence?”

Shams’s message about returning to one’s roots and redefining a personal sense of self through careful thought and consideration is something that Ella and Aziz both go through at different points in their lives. For Ella, this takes place when she first begins her emailing with Aziz and continues past his death; for Aziz, this moment of awakening takes places when he becomes a Sufi.

“If you want to change the way others treat you, you should first change the way you treat yourself. Unless you learn to love yourself, fully and sincerely, there is no way you can be loved. Once you achieve that stage, however, be thankful for every thorn that others might throw at you. It is a sign that you will soon be showered in roses.”

Rather than focusing on her relationship with her husband, Ella instead turns her attention inward and begins to do things that bring her pleasure, such as reading the poetry of Rumi. Kimya, on the other hand, puts her value in her marriage to Shams and is thus devastated when he is not interested in her. This rejection is seen as a rejection of who Kimya is, rather than a rejection of the relationship itself. 

“Fret not where the road will take you. Instead concentrate on the first step. That’s the hardest part and that’s what you are responsible for. Once you take that step let everything do what it naturally does and the rest will follow. Do not go with the flow. Be the flow.”

At the end of the book, Ella is the definition of the flow—without an idea where to move next, after Aziz’s death, Ella embraces the moment and decides on a whim to move to Holland to try a life there, knowing that she can move on if she is unhappy. After all of her planning, Aziz teaches her the value in taking the first step into the unknown and moving with the struggles, rather than letting them pull her down.

“The past is an interpretation. The future is an illusion. The world does not move through time as if it were a straight line, proceeding from the past to the future. Instead time moves through and within us, in endless spirals. Eternity does not mean infinite time, but simply timelessness.”

This kind of mystical idea is plentiful throughout Rumi and Shams’s conversations as they connect themselves to those scholars and thinkers who came before them in the same way that Aziz replicates himself through the character Shams in his book.

“Your destiny is the level where you will play your tune. You might not change your instrument but how well you play is entirely in your hands.”

The idea of changing not oneself but one’s tune is exactly the kind of change that Ella undergoes over the course of the novel; while she still enjoys the same things—cooking, spending time with her children—she becomes more independent and self-sufficient and engaged with the world around her through Aziz.

“What we need is sincere self-examination. Not being on the watch for the fault of others.”

Determining who is at fault is something Aladdin is focused on throughout the book. He blames Shams for his father’s lack of focus and adherence to his normal life of study and sermons, taking it as an affront to their way of life before Shams arrived. Rather than examining his life and/or himself, Aladdin instead focuses his grief and frustration on his father’s companion.

“There is only one way to be born into a new life: to die before death.”

Aziz’s and Shams’s acceptance of death plays a major role in their abilities to appreciate life. Because they are not worried about the future, they are able to focus more acutely on the people in front of them and their actions in the moment, rather than focusing on their future reputation or plans.