Relationships are made up of multiple manipulative factors: trust, honesty, attraction, passion, compatibility and many other emotional components. However, the key ingredient to starting a healthy relationship is love. Love is comparable to the search for enlightenment. “Searching means: having a purpose; but to find means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no aim” (113). Love is natural; it is neither sought after nor potential. Love is not tangible. It brings comfort, protection, disillusionment and the million nervous butterflies that clutter your stomach. Hermann Hesse traveled through Siddhartha's life covering his ambivalent relationships throughout the novel. Siddhartha's relationships fluctuated with the changes he made to himself. Once a Brahmin, he respected his father's thoughts and followed his teachings. Wishing to be a Samana, he left love to find a new one. When that wasn't enough, his love craved more and materialistic objects captured his soul. He wanted to be taught love by who he thought was the first master, only to run away from her in the end. His love then was to find his Self. The river has brought all its relationships together in one place. Through Hesse, Siddhartha demonstrated that without the relationship with his father Kamala and himself, his path to enlightenment would not have developed. Siddhartha's father, a Brahmin noble, gave his son not only his teachings but also his love. Growing up, Siddhartha rejected his father's love. He wanted to explore beyond the Brahmin tradition and discover Nirvana. His father limited Siddhartha's ability to realize spiritual wisdom, which gave him reason to abandon it. However, her father was hesitant… mid-paper… to protect their relationship. Through his reflection in his son, Siddhartha's enlightened path rewarded him with the power of listening. Through it all, Hermann Hesse explained how without Siddhartha's relationship with his father, Kamala, and himself he would not have changed as he sought enlightenment. He left his father's love, never to return, just for the chance to find a new love in gambling. He longed for Kamala's teachings of love, and their relationship went from denial to acceptance. In his son he saw a reflection of himself and had to release love when it could no longer be limited. Hesse revealed existence to enlightenment surviving through the value of love in a relationship. All in all, enlightenment could not breathe without the continuous impulse of love. Works Cited Hesse, Hermann, Siddhartha, New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2003