You are the sky – everything else, it’s just the weather {A.K.A. Being in love has everything to do with you}

I’ve asked myself often when I feel love the most.

If I asked the girl I was over ten years ago, she’d probably say something that the now-me would fundamentally disagree with. Yes. She was the Oh-God-what-was-I-thinking version of me.

A teenager in a twenty-year-old’s body. (Hint: A teenager is a child with an adult’s body) – The twenty-year-old me thought love is something she found with another person regardless of what they both did or didn’t have in common (including sense. And also someone she was totally incompatible with. *Insert eye roll and a little nausea*).

Level up – The twenty-five-year-old, quarter-life crisis version of me would tell you when she doesn’t feel love. She would also tell you what love definitely isn’t. She was weird, but she leveled up from the previous version.

If you take your happiness and put it in someone’s hands, sooner or later, he or she is going to break it. – Don Miguel Ruiz

 

Tears. Failed relationships. Rejection. Pain. More pain. Breakups. Lying. Being lied to. Trying. Falling. Being tired. Really fucking tired. Wanting to never try again. Getting up – The late twenties versions of me would tell you all about their heartbreaks and how with each choice and each heartbreak, they were one step closer to the real thing.

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
― Rumi

 

Damnit. Rumi was right – Eventually, when I did find a healthy relationship (or should I say as I am growing into a good relationship), I finally realized that all those things poets like Rumi and Hafiz, philosophers like Mooji and Pema Chodron said? – they’re all true. I should’ve listened. (My brain says “I told you so.” But I’m just going to take comfort in the fact that my neurotic brain which predicts every possibility in the universe simultaneously, has to get something right by sheer chance – so I win, brain, I win.)

You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.
― Pema Chödrön

 

It took me so long to even feel that love arises from within. We search for it on  in another person, in our job, in our posts on social media, in money, in luxury. And we don’t find it because it just doesn’t exist there. It doesn’t even begin to exist in a relationship until it exists in you.

The now version of me, after many travesties, has recognized that I feel love most when I accept myself the way I am, in the simple things, simple moments that ground me and allow me to feel now. Most involve a memory, a primal feeling of safety, belonging, oneness. Looking out the window with the sun coming in, whilst deciding what to blog about. Listening again, after so many years, to a song I used to listen to when I had a crush on a school friend. Remembering that feeling. Smiling. Sitting on rocks in front of a waterfall dipping my feet in the water. Making a good lunch. Evening cup of tea. Listening to my nephew squeak about his favorite vehicles and ocean animals.

I realize the more I go, I just fall in love with life. The other day I sat next to my nephew in the car on our car ride back home. Ten minutes reminded me about how easy it is to be in love.

Can we play a guessing game?

Yes.

You have to ask questions and then the other person has to guess the answer.

Okay.

My turn first!

Okay.

It is a big construction vehicle and dozes everything. What is it?

Is it a bulldozer?

YES!!!!

 

– ❤ Aarthi