A little
while before I met my boyfriend (or rather, re-met, as we first met each other
in 7th grade… but that’s a whole other story), I got to a very
interesting and surprising place. A
place of surrender, which became a place of power. To set the scene, I was in my early 30’s and
just out of another short lived relationship that ended like the others… we got
along, we had fun, we had good physical chemistry… but… there was just no
depth, no forward movement. And while I
felt empowered that I chose to move on and wouldn’t just let myself “settle,”
still, I was quite devastated and confused.
Like many
women, I always thought that I would have found the long-term “one” by then. At that point, I was over the dating for
sport thing and really wanted a partner to share my life with, to grow with, to share my love with…. and I always thought I’d be a person who
would have that. So I then spent months
of being down and frustrated that I was still without my “one,” spent bouts of
time being mad at God as I watched all my friends so easily fall in love (I
know, I know, appearances can be deceiving and we never know what goes on
behind closed doors. But I was having a pity party for myself, at that point,
ok?) Why was it SO easy for everyone
else?! I was doing all the “work” on
myself that all those self-help and dating advice things said to do….so where
was he!!!!!!!!??
But then a
wave of something – I don’t know, call it wisdom, call it the universe speaking
to me, call it my inner voice, or just call me crazy – but something hit me
flat out in the face one day and changed everything. I had this revelation: really, who was I to
think I knew better than my “life plan and destiny,” or God, or the “universe”
(take your spiritual pick). I honestly
thought I would be a person to have a soulmate-type marriage, to have a
long-term love of my life partner…. but, hey, that may just not be the plan for
me. I may not be meant to be married or
have that kind of long-term romantic love. It surprised me… but if that’s what the
greater “plan” was for me, then who was I to argue or be upset? In a way, it was a relief; if I was meant to
go through this life single, then cool. I can own that and move forward. It gave me an out. I could stop worrying about it, because it
wasn’t supposed to happen anyways.
Of course,
as all love stories go, we’re told the moment we stop looking for it or don’t
want it is when it happens. So, yeah,
that’s what happened to me. I was really
happy and fulfilled in my life, exactly as it was… I was single, owned it, and
empowered to be it. Then, my boyfriend
just “showed up” very soon after. I
wasn’t expecting it. In fact, I didn’t
even think he was hitting on me… the first time we went out, I didn’t even know
it was a date. And then it all just
flowed totally organically and pressure-free.
Because I had surrendered.
When we want
ANYTHING badly – a job, a relationship, money, a stroke of creative e genius, etc
- it creates an air of desperation. And
this energy of desperation acts like a rubber wall and a heavy coat of
armor - what you want can’t get to you…
in fact, in the case of the rubber wall analogy, the more desperate you are,
the more it bounces further and further away from you. When we become obsessed with something we are
so sure we’re meant to have, we literally stop living our lives and stop being
aware of the present moment, because all we’re thinking about is why we don’t
have that thing/person we want, why it’s SO unfair that we don’t, and so
forth.
Next time
you find yourself in the obsessive desperation of wanting, try to chill out and
just surrender to where you are… because maybe, just maybe, there’s actually
something better coming to you. You just
have to drop the desperation to allow it to come in.
