You Don't Know Jack Shit About Love
But you can learn
I believe in you.
To love anything is to feel surrendered in it’s presence. A connection that blurs the boundaries between observer and object.
Could it be…an experience?
A sensation that the body is leaning into like a magnetic pull to our next lesson.
We’re drawn in and enamored by not what we see, but how we feel when we see and experience the things we enjoy.
I love it.
I’m jumping out of my skin for it, every part of me buzzing for what I love.
And what is it anyway?
It’s a feeling that can transcend time like a deep impulse from somewhere out in space.
It’s the sensation of a connection to life energy, resonation.
The things that we love make us stay present, we are alive with the sensation of our energy for something.
When we feel seen and connected, time slips away.
It’s so addicting, really.
So we try to hold on to that which we love (because it feels great so why not?)and that’s when the trouble starts.
You really have 2 options when it comes to love:
-Loving a fantasized idea of something
-Loving an observed truth of something
Loving a fantasized idea is to fall deeply for your own delusion of a timeline that you do not control.
VS
Loving the observed truth is to accept and allow things and people to be as they are with full abandon of any expectations that you designed.
As it is an experience and felt sense, it can be fleeting.
& I think that’s OK. We are evolving, why wouldn’t our feelings also evolve?
In traditional monogamous relationships we like to pretend that this does not happen. That it in fact, cannot happen if we are to continue living in the world we designed.
We like how we constructed these walls, we don’t want them to change.
Not wanting them to change has no impact on whether or not things change.
Things will always change.
Over and over again until we die.
We will always be disappointed when our expectations are not in line with reality.
Before we can really mean what we say when we say, “I love you”. We need to clarify the type of our intention.
Loving a fantasy:
I love how you make me feel
Are you using this person to fulfill something lacking within yourself?
Maybe listening to the bodily sensations too much here, I love how good I feel with you because you validate some need I’m not validating within myself.
I love you (but really I love your interests and hobbies)
He’s got a boat (I gotta watch myself with this one)
I love that we both like the same things (familiar, comfortable)
I love you (for who you might be in the future)
I’m daydreaming in your eyes, what a life we can have!
I love you (as you are right now)
Please do not change or show that you are just as human as me, I can’t handle that.
This type of love falls apart as the inevitable winds of change come a blowin’
Loving a reality(as observed):
I love you for who you are as a person
Not the idea of what I could mold you into
I love you for the way you think (don’t get me started bc this is the hottest sexiest type of shit)
I like how you process information, I like your mindset, I’m interested in how you think and adapt and I find you to be fascinating
I love you because you are a human on earth at the same time as me, what a miracle, I love you for existing.
I don’t judge you for being yourself, I understand the complexities of personality and how we are all kind of making it up as we go.
I came across a quote that illustrates a beautiful type of love, one that is centered around experience(observed truth):
Nothing you become will disappoint me; I have no preconception that I’d like to see you be or do. I have no desire to foresee you, only to discover you. You can’t disappoint me.
-Mary Haskell
This is what we need to aim for because it’s the only type that can last.
Now for most of this conversation I am separating the idea of love from any typical boundary of marriage license or agreed commitment because this type of love isn’t just for romantic relationships and the laundry list of societal expectations on those.
This love is for family, friends, strangers but most importantly… yourself.
And truly without giving this type of love to yourself, you cannot give it to another.
You cannot understand and give what you haven’t experienced.
Tbh it really seems that most people do not have this level of care for themselves.
It’s taken me a loooooooooooong time to even comprehend how I might accept myself as I am and love myself regardless for what shows up when I peak behind the curtain. (They DO NOT match the drapes)
How can I express enough to you that your time is limited and regardless of your community and relationships you will always be alone within yourself.
Do you want to die hating yourself? I don’t.
I spent a lot of time over my lifetime thinking about all the things I needed to change before I could relax into myself, what a sham way to enjoy life.
Can you imagine? You are given one short fast life and you spend it mad 🤣
How can I tell you how freeing it is to love and accept yourself? How powerful it is to know that you alone are responsible for your happiness!
We are always shifting that responsibility to someone or something else.
So we end up empty🕳️because it can only come from within and it can only come from building a relationship with the self so we can see this life for what it is.
An experience.
We layer so many opinions over that experience, trying to guess every next moment.
And we are really bad at guessing.
So we have expectations on ourselves, we have expectations on other, and on life itself.
All of which will be debunked in time.
Once you understand that we are conscious awareness experiencing itself you can see how there is little need for all the words and expectations we put on it.
Life is going to life, its a force and it’s moving with or without us so we can either make a safe space from which to observe and not attach ourselves or we can create some sort of new fucked up expectation maze for which we will ultimately die in and then have to start over.
It’s much easier to let go of your white knuckled grip on life and just see what happens.
And in the meantime, if you’re really not in charge (based upon facts of how your life does not work exactly as you like or expect) then why don’t you take it easy on yourself and everyone else.
When you can do that, loving people is easy.
Loving yourself is easy.
Enjoying life is easy.
As one of my friends says, “It’s not that complicated.”
He says that when I am over complicating things, because EVEN me.
I’m caught in Samsara with the rest of you schmucks, I’m just trying to distill it a bit for the both of us.
❤️