Allowing ourselves to be and feel truly connected to others is not an easy proposition. In many ways it can seem to make more sense for us to stay disconnected, to stay separate from experiencing who we are in relationship to other people. We lack the kind of faith that allows for genuine relationship. We have been hurt too may times.
The truth of the matter is that we are one large human family, all living on this planet together. We all share the pain and triumph that is being human, that is being a being with the potential for love and self-consciousness. When we are able to reach out to others through that shared experience, we call that compassion.
It is one thing to be compassionate, another to allow that compassion to be a source of connection and strength for both ourselves and others. We are each other’s best teachers. We are each other’s bridge to a better tomorrow. Love is a living experience we find when we tap into the source that is at the root of our connection to one another.
We have all been hurt, and we all have the potential for forgiveness and true connection. When we discover that true faith and safety can only be found within, we suddenly find that we are no longer as afraid of connecting to others. How do we find that faith and security? We begin with rediscovering what it is to be alive in this moment, examining assumptions and beliefs, and taking responsibility for who we are in this life. We begin by becoming aware of how we are making choices.
When we choose to connect, we are choosing life. We all have that right, the right to live in freedom without fear. But whether it is the fear of where our next meal is going to come from, or fear of a terrorist attack, it takes will to not give in. It takes an act of conscience and strength to allow ourselves to be truly alive as a person in the world.
09 November 2007
02 November 2007
Seasons of Love
There is always something to learn from nature about relationships, and this applies especially to the cycle of the seasons. If you live in a place where the leaves turn and fall in autumn, chances are that you love this season. Even though it’s getting colder and we know that winter is on its way, there is something fall that evokes a beautiful sense of the bittersweet, which for some reason we experience as a complex combination of relaxation and excitement, a mixture of hope for and acceptance of what is to come.
This is the phase of the relationship season that is often the most difficult for couples to be comfortable with. It’s as if they can feel winter’s approach and forget to enjoy the sense of fall as it occurs in their relationship. Fall gives us the feeling that we are going to be okay—it is preparing us for winter with a subtle reminder of spring. But in relationship, this feeling can be difficult to interpret, especially for those who have never seen a relationship through winter, and have not been around relationships that have weathered many moons.
The fall of a relationship is a comfortable settling. It is not “settling”, but rather becoming comfortable in the knowledge that to be in a relationship is to be in flux, to be in movement. Every relationship has its dark days, and also times when both partners are working inwardly, when the new growth of the relationship is being created through individual and personal growth. Often, though, when we feel the subtle impression of this reality, the feeling of impending winter, we forget about spring, and think that we have lost something in the relationship. We forget that, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh quotes Saint Exupery in Gift from the Sea: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other. But in looking outward together in the same direction."
When we first fall in love, we are smitten, we are obsessed, we cannot get enough of the other person. But if we make the mistake of thinking that that state of being is love itself, that that is what it should be all of the time, and that if that state fades, that we have lost something, we are losing out on the opportunity to find what love can really give us: joy, real friendship, intimacy, and a deeper sense of life in all its meanings. And we miss out on all the springs to come.
This is the phase of the relationship season that is often the most difficult for couples to be comfortable with. It’s as if they can feel winter’s approach and forget to enjoy the sense of fall as it occurs in their relationship. Fall gives us the feeling that we are going to be okay—it is preparing us for winter with a subtle reminder of spring. But in relationship, this feeling can be difficult to interpret, especially for those who have never seen a relationship through winter, and have not been around relationships that have weathered many moons.
The fall of a relationship is a comfortable settling. It is not “settling”, but rather becoming comfortable in the knowledge that to be in a relationship is to be in flux, to be in movement. Every relationship has its dark days, and also times when both partners are working inwardly, when the new growth of the relationship is being created through individual and personal growth. Often, though, when we feel the subtle impression of this reality, the feeling of impending winter, we forget about spring, and think that we have lost something in the relationship. We forget that, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh quotes Saint Exupery in Gift from the Sea: "Love does not consist in gazing at each other. But in looking outward together in the same direction."
When we first fall in love, we are smitten, we are obsessed, we cannot get enough of the other person. But if we make the mistake of thinking that that state of being is love itself, that that is what it should be all of the time, and that if that state fades, that we have lost something, we are losing out on the opportunity to find what love can really give us: joy, real friendship, intimacy, and a deeper sense of life in all its meanings. And we miss out on all the springs to come.
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