A new experience is a journey of sorts, like a road trip. Yes you want to get to San Fran, or Seattle, or Elmer Idaho, but the journey is often the best part of the trip, it’s the adventure of the unknown, and what happens along the way to the destination that you remember and retell in the years to come. The way you and your cohorts handled those unforeseen little events becomes the stuff of future legend. Love too, is a journey, so many things in our lives are journeys, and for many of us it is nearly impossible not to mentally rush ahead to the destination, the hoped for outcome. We may not even realize we are doing it, but many of us go so far as to plan out a script of what should happen when and how, forgetting that true partnership means relinquishing half of the control to the other person and risking being open to their preferences and speed of doing or not doing anything. A real relationship requires a deep friendship, and constantly increasing trust and vulnerability to succeed.
Love is not possible without trust, certainly a happy and fulfilling relationship is not. And yet, trust can be hard to come by for those who don’t know what it should look like. We’ve all heard the poetic yearning of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlow, and have some very archetypal ideals of what we think love SHOULD look like. But we are often wrong, and those intensely burning flights of fancy and fantasy, more often than not burn out or come from a hunger that ultimately must be fulfilled in the self rather than the externalized desire to be completed by another. In other words, the dark passions we come to associate with romantic, and literary love are often the most unhealthy types, doomed to disappointment and failure before they begin… search your experiences, you probably know this to be at least partly true in your own past, even if it was back in high school.
So what does healthy love look and feel like? How can we create something we have so few models for? Many of us fear that leaving the dark romanticism behind may doom us to a life without passion, adventure or excitement. But perhaps it’s just a matter of perspective. When ones way of looking at life, love, experience, and expectation is limited or slanted from a very tightly controlled point of view the possibilities may seem limited or very black and white, good or bad, either/or. That is a sure sign we are stuck in a rut and NOT seeing the whole picture of possibilities.
There are a thousand, thousand things we can do, and ways for a fun, healthy, loving relationship to unfold, be it a new romance, a new job, a new creative partnership or professional association. There is NO script, and that may be the scariest thing of all. We like to have a sense of control over our lives and the things that matter to us, and interactions with another person that stirs our deepest most uncontrollable emotions is something many of us do not know how to do with open, loving, vulnerability.
We’ve all been hurt, we have all been through some stuff, we’ve all been wrong in our judgment, or expectations at least once. And it is this fear, this unhealed resentment that clogs the flow of our trust and the new opportunities to do it differently. We really do have a choice, and sometimes, the less choice we SEE, the more choices we actually have, but it takes courage, strength and dedication to step outside of our comfort zone and allow things to unfold in real time, present NOW. Sometimes Risking Trust is a moment by moment struggle, as we build new synapses and ways to relate to new situations.
We are so incredible blessed to have this opportunity of choice. Again and again. To choose to see things without the scars and wounds of the past coloring our perspective with bitterness. And if we miss it, or mess it up, it comes around again in a different guise, a different coat, a new day. There is no rush. We can put it off as long as we wish and it will present itself over and over in newly profound ways each time, until we finally trust LIFE enough to leap, even when we have forgotten how to trust ourselves, or our own judgement. Eventually we lean to not judge what comes to us.
Eventually we stop overthinking what we perceive, even if it is just for a moment and our hearts are heard without the cluttered scripts they mind lays down from past synapses and accumulated experience. Throw it out! Be here Now. Feel your way forward, and don’t worry about the destination so much. Life is all about the quality of your journey. We will all got there in the end, regardless of the road we take. Don’t be afraid of a few bumps and bruises, you can take them. You were designed for the daring adventure that is life, and fear itself is worse than anything that may have once set it in motion. Get help! Therapy doesn’t carry the daunting label of being somehow inadequate that it once did. Modern life is difficult, and we all need help coping from time to time; to learn HOW to heal, to see differently and to truly be fearless. It is your own wonderful, joy filled life that your fear is preventing, and that isn’t about anyone else but you. You deserve a joy filled life that you fill with love and NO one can give it to you but you. One baby step at a time.
Ultimately the biggest adventure has an element of the unknown as what truly makes it worthwhile and trans-formative. The right person, often is NOT the person we want the most, no matter how much we desire it to be so and go our own way. That would be one sided, and fantasy like, in other words unrealistic and Not healthy.
The right person is the one who meets you where you are, authentically, and whom you respect enough to allow and appreciate a different perspective and opinion from. The right person agrees to go on the journey with you, step by step, with a lot of courage and honesty, un-contrived. You sense in a very deep and calm place the truth of trustworthiness in them, and the desire to always be forthcoming and trustworthy yourself. From this space of respect, and vulnerability and willingness to be open to whatever the other person brings to the table, Love grows deeper, and passion only increases with time and trust. This then is the fairy tale that the other thing looks like it should be. We don’t really choose the right person, we simply recognize them when the time is right.
Blessed Be your Journey.
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