Anyone who walks out of your life, this is a gift.
You do not want people who are half in, half out.
And you are such a lovely and beautiful person
that anyone would be lucky
to have you in their life.
And so, you must not let those
who fail to see your worth or appreciate you,
distract you from seeing those who do not.
And though you may gaze back
at the door where they left and ask yourself
“Why didn’t they stay?”
The real question you must ask is
“Why would I want someone to stay in my life
who doesn’t want to be there?”
And once they leave,
be grateful that they have made space
for someone whose love is not half-hearted
but who will love you as much as you love them.
And appreciate that it was only
a small time that they remained in your life
rather than a lifetime,
as with each person who exits,
you are closer to finding the one
who will wish to stay.
And with each person who leaves,
you must remember that love
is merely a portal to the divine,
which can come in many forms,
and no one person can ever compare to
or come close to replacing your connection
with the ultimate source of love.
And there is never only one person
who is destined to be in your life.
And so, you must not overvalue one person
but remember that everyone
is beautiful and special
and what you experienced with them,
you will find again: It has shown you
what is possible for you.
And though when you were young,
you may have confused love for being
someone you must chase and beg to stay,
in time, you will come to appreciate
that it is exactly the opposite:
it is someone who feels like home.
Someone who will not hesitate to stay,
and will never look twice at the door.
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Walking Away
• Taking the High Road
• Jeff Foster on the Healing Power of “Holding Space”
• Like a Sure Thing
• What We Crave
• Something Worth Remembering
• Passion, Tide and Time
• The Empty Beach
• Wendy Matthews: Free, Like the Wind
• Dew[y]-Kissed
• Intimate Soliloquies
• The Gravity of Love
• Awakening the Wild Soul
• The Soul’s Beloved
• Love Is My Guide
• The Path Ahead
Image: Saaxiib Qurux Baden (“Beautiful Friend”) St. Paul, MN – Michael J. Bayly (11/12/23).
1 comment:
A larger context: our culture (in its busyness to get our attention to consume goods, services, ideas, and experiences that temporarily alleviate our anxieties) grooms us to imagine that there is always at least one special person in romantic-companionate for each of us*. The truth is: that is not only a universally true thing, it is no tragedy that it is not universally true. We treat that reality-based-truth as unwelcome, and in so doing enslave ourselves to a fiction that can encourage us to treat unthriving relationships as thriving.
* FWIW, this is especially true for gay men who came of age during the first decade or so of The Plague. I recall reading a story about study a generation ago on the incidence of HIV/AIDs in rolling 5-year birth cohorts of American gay men; IIRC, the highest such cohort was born 1958-1962, with gradually (at least at first) declining incidence on cohorts on either side of that peak. There are just way fewer gay men in that generation than would otherwise have been the case.
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