The three greatest relationships we can hope for are, 1) relationship with self, 2) relationship with the world, 3) a best friend who tolerates us. In seeing self as the most intimate and understanding relationship we will possibly know, all else becomes a gift. Not one to expect, but one to appreciate when offered.
Pause here. Before reading further, will you carefully entertain the above? Can this possibly be? What if, the greatest possible friend and companion you are looking for, is actually you? This is the foundation upon which all other relationships are possible.
Perhaps you’ve been yearning all your life, for someone who SEES you. Someone who understands your plight. Someone who empathizes with every twist and turn of your story, offers kind words, fully appreciates your beauty and genius. Loves what you love, wants what you want, collaborates, listens, gives, supports.
Perhaps you’ve come so close to this. Another person offers a compliment that makes you feel recognized. Or, a romantic partner sort of gets you, but sort of doesn’t. Or, you see your dream person, but they don’t see you back (yet). You are certain it’s only a matter of time. Or, you know your best friend is out there, it’s simply a matter of fate. You have a keyhole in mind, and you will know when the key presents itself.
What if all of these are fantasy? What if your dance partner has been sitting patiently in the chair, available to you for your entire life, and you’ve been looking above them, beyond them, all this time? How would you feel, as the person in the chair, being overlooked?
Look in the mirror. There are depths of creativity and self-understanding and mystery that can be explored for a thousand lifetimes. Every moment alive is an opportunity to see. More than you can possibly ever know. What a fantastic dilemma.
Your instinct to find unity was never wrong. Take great comfort, this profound unity can be found within.
You are everything you’ve ever yearned for. In a way, always a stranger to be further explored, but at the same, always you.
“And yet on the other side of the difficult, once we cease trying to control life out of loneliness and instead surrender to the elemental solitude — there lies an ease with an edge of ecstasy.”
– Maria Popova
“The time will come
– Derek Wolcott
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.”