Being together
really is a simple thing at its core, a fact all too easy to lose sight of.
For
the moment we are efforting our way through our relationships—by which I mean creating
a litany of rules and guidelines for behaviour modification—may be the same
moment we have compromised our ability to accept others as they are and the
love on which the relationships were originally founded. Let me explain.
One of the
hallmarks of a robust love is that it is unconditional, except that all too
often our love arrangements are founded on the weak foundation of bargaining.
Unless we want our unions to resemble the fracas of a market place, I would
suggest a less business-like approach.
How about
letting those we love be perfectly themselves and not bargain them into
altering who they are to suit our own image of who we’d prefer they be?
Remember, I
didn’t say that being together (loving and being loved) was an easy entity to
manage, only a simple one. If someone we’ve been with proves over time to have
a corrosive and deleterious effect on our lives, we owe it to ourselves to make
changes that don’t require
either our beloved, or ourselves to be someone other than who they/we are, or
where they/we are in our journey in life.
And sometimes this means making difficult
choices—cutting ballast so-to-speak.
But it also requires a journey of exploration inward to examine our ability
(or compromised ability) to love and respect ourselves, and not look outside for what we can, ultimately, only find within.
I’d like to
underline at this juncture that what I mean by loving ourselves involves
tapping in to what makes us feel alive, living how we want to live, from a base of personal passion and authenticity.
Cultivating the
skills that make this happen transforms everything in the domain of love
because then love becomes an organic act of freely sharing the passion and vitality naturally springing from
our own life, rather than a desperate attempt to grasp after it in the lives of
others.
They say that
home is where the heart is, and nowhere is this truer than the home we have in
ourselves. We must honour and care for the life of the heart.
Then simply
being together becomes a reality, an act of relative, effortless flow.
I’ve said it
before, I’ll say it again—we’ve got to be
the love.
