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hey beautiful imperfect human, happy sunday to you.
it is raining today. i am at my desk, ac set to 17, listening to the
rain instead of the tv sounds that usually drift in from the living
room. the house is full today, my brother and my sister, their
partners, my parents, two cats, two dogs. but there is no noise. i am lucky, it
is a big house, and they respect my hermitness, whether that means
being locked in my room or just walking around with headphones on. and
in the middle of all that space they give me, what i feel is love. not
for anyone in particular. just love. that is what i want to talk to you
about today.
we usually attach it to a short list: the person you are in a
relationship with, the child you are raising, the friend you would do
anything for, the dog or the cat curled up next to you every night. and
when those things are real, they are wonderful. loving your parents,
being loved by your children, feeling everything through a partner and
with them, that is a real and good way to live.
but what happens when you do not have any of that. no partner, no baby,
no pet, no close family nearby, no deep friendship you can call at
midnight. all that love just stays inside you, with nowhere obvious to
go. i know this feeling. i have sat with it and felt like the problem,
like i was carrying around all this unused affection nobody was asking
for. i have imagined someone looking at me and thinking, oh my gosh,
she is frozen in life. still at her parents. no baby. not married. just
this lonely person. and i am sure some people do think that. but
others probably think the opposite, that i have it easy, so lucky, no
kids running around, no messy man to clean up after.
here, sitting at my desk, in my ordinary, unnoticed life, this is what
i believe. love does
not start with what you have. i am love. everything i experience in
life moves through that, whether or not there is someone here to
receive it. i am a lover, with or without a lover, because love is who
i am, not who i am with. it is not proof of a relationship. it is the
center of my life, and the way i move through a day.
this is my approach to life. instead of just repeating that to myself,
i try to live inside it. what does it mean to live lovingly. to notice love when
it shows up in small, unglamorous places. to become capable of it. to
lose it, distort it, confuse it with attachment. to find it in
friendship, in family, in work, in the ordinary middle of a tuesday.
at that size, love stops being a person i am missing and becomes a way
of paying attention. it is in discernment. in truth. in the boundary i
hold even when it costs me. in curiosity, in devotion, in friendship,
in care, in presence. love is an invisible force whose effects are
completely physical. it can sit at a breakfast table. it can be there
before you even open your eyes in the morning. it can be a quiet room
and the sound of rain.
what i do know is that i do not want to spend my life waiting. waiting
for the friend, the partner, the baby, the dog, as if love only starts
once those things arrive. you can still want all of it. you can still
write letters to a person you have not met yet, still wonder who they
are. but you do not have to wait to be loving. we already are love.
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