I’ve heard recommended a few times recently that if you’re writing a story, or planning an event, it helps to start at the end, see the complete vision, and work your way backwards, thus creating the pathway for arriving at your destination.
The Ending. That’s the hardest part. It’s blurry. I can’t quite fathom it. Beneath my senior yearbook photo, my future plans read, *Small, midwestern liberal arts college (name withheld to protect the innocent), Psychology, Fall in love, Be happy.
No mention of kids, or marriage, specifically. But I definitely got those. Graduated, too, though not as a psych major (a crush on a boy DJ on the campus radio station, lead me to the Communications department. I wound up a Mass/Comm major.) I did the fall in love thing and got married after college, though the “be happy” bit has been more of a challenge.
I guess true happiness, or true love, remains elusive when, deep down, you expect that it will come from somewhere or someone outside of yourself. And in order to get love, you really have to be able to first give it, starting with yourself. Unlike that scene in When Harry Met Sally, self love isn’t so much something you can fake, cause you’d know. So, really really, you have to believe that you are worthy of love.
It’s a terrifying idea, worthiness. And yet, I have many friends. Even now, as I’ve been trying on transparency in my relationships, telling the whole truth and being completely vulnerable, revealing warts and all, I am learning that I am worthy. In fact, my friends who loved so called, “perfect me,” still love “flawed me,” maybe even, a little bit more so.
So I guess the sign that hung in my childhood kitchen was true: Not the one that said, “Fuck Housework,” though I could get behind that concept. But rather, the one with the little skunk that said, “A friend is someone who knows all about you, but loves you anyway.” Shouldn’t THAT be the kind of friend that I am to myself? Whoa, isn’t that what God is? Someone who knows all about you and loves you anyway?
A friend shared this beautiful Hafiz poem earlier today:
You could become a great horseman
And help to free yourself and this world
But only if you and prayer become sweet lovers.
It is a naive man who thinks we are not engaged in a fierce battle
For I see and hear brave foot soldiers all around me going mad,
Falling to the ground in excruciating pain
You could become a victorious horseman
And carry your heart through this world
like a life giving sun,
But only if you and the Great Spirit
become secret lovers.
What if, rather than being in control, rowing upstream, I put the oars inside the boat and just see where the current, the love, takes me? What then? Maybe then, I’ll be able to begin, at the end of my story.
mindful musings 