My Heart is a Labyrinth
The last year has not been kind to the long-term relationships in the lives of the people around me. Every month I’ve heard news of one or two more marriages breaking down. I do not think this is inherently a bad thing. I think it’s folly to vow to want to be with someone forever. It is a noble vow if you take it, and a beautiful thing if you follow through, but too many people promise to stay with each other simply because no other promises are available to them. They lack the understanding or imagination to make a promise they want to keep. Too many people break their promises because they did not understand those promises; they did not realise how profoundly they were compromising themselves when they set out.
To love someone in order to always have them near you shows a profound lack of faith in Providence. It has everything to do with fear, and nothing to do with love, which is fear’s inverse. Love is its own reward; it is not a means to an end. To say that you will love someone because they will be the father of your children, or so that they will be your companion in old age, or if they satisfy some putative domestic arrangement that you have in mind - these things are a corruption of love. By saying them, we sell ourselves short. Love is unconditional. Unconditionality is what defines love. If something comes and goes, it is not love. Perhaps it touches love, and from there it derives its savour, but it is not itself love. It is not deep enough. Love lies so far down in our souls that it contains and embraces all opposite things. If something becomes something else - if a feeling can be blotted out by another - it is not love; it is probably closer to hate.
A finer vow, and I think a holier vow, than the vow to always sleep in the same bedroom with someone, is the vow to love someone always. To vow in this way is to realign your vision of marriage: it cuts a new groove for your energies; it will probably be the making of you as a woman or man. To remain always in a domestic partnership with someone else demands a certain discipline that may require you to ignore or suppress certain instincts you have. To love someone forever is a deeper and finer discipline, and I think a more demanding one, but it is also effortless, for it runs in current with our nature. We are born to love. The purpose of life is to awaken love. Love is the most effortless thing there is. We are restrained from love only by fear; love itself is the way out of that prison.
The saddest thing in the world is when two people who have loved each other go their separate ways feeling rancour. We are only given a handful of people to love from up close in our lives, and if our relationships with those people resolve into bitterness, it is a tragedy. We were given a precious love, like a priceless flower, and we suffered it to die. We have not been wise; by a thousand small lies and closings, we have let a great gift wither. We have let our love wilt.
Too many people seek closure after a break-up by making an enemy of the other person involved. It is as though their high opinion of themselves is more important to them than love. That is an abomination. That pride should rank higher than love in our priorities is a perversion that we only tolerate because it is so wide-spread. It is the modern tragedy. That love can dissolve into petty disputes and nasty squabbling, simply because we did not have the wisdom or skillfulness to preserve the relationship in which we discovered it - this is the soul’s horror story.
It took me many years to learn to open my heart. I required guidance. That I received such guidance is the greatest grace of my life. The knowledge of how to nurture love is the finest gift I have been given. Love is, after all, happiness. Refining the ability to love is the one thing worth devoting a life to. It is a path with no end, each step of which makes us happier, happier, happier. It tears us open and turns us inside out; we lose our bearings, we let go of our delusions. We let go, we let go: we let go of everything. Love makes us unbearably light.
Everyone who has found their way into my heart after a certain point of my life will never find their way out again. My heart is a labyrinth: there is no escape. If I have loved you, I will never stop. Love has become a fire in me, and everything that obscures that fire will be burned. I will not long tolerate hatred. I will not be held back by fear. If once I love you, I will never stop loving you again. That is my vow. And it is my discipline. But that discipline is no imposition on me; that discipline is my delight.
I have identified three steps to nurturing love in a relationship. First, we must tell the truth - the absolute truth, even if it is uncomfortable. For most people, this will mean learning to tell the truth to themselves, then finding the courage to tell it to another, even if truth might mean rejection. We cannot love each other if we do not know each other. We are all good at heart; in the eyes of love, there is nothing to hide.
The second step is to forgive, which means always pivoting back to love. Whatever slight you receive, whatever humiliation or pain is done to you, must be acknowledged, felt, and let go. Throw it on the pyre of love, let it burn up. Love will strip you naked, but if you choose love and do not hide, this nakedness will set you free.
The third step is to see the divine in the other person. To see that they were once a child, to see that they will soon be old, and soon die. To see the light in them, and induce it to shine out. To appreciate the other as a tender miracle, a gift from grace. To realise that they are precious - a soulmate with whom you share a divine life. And to not forget.
How can you love someone, and suspect them of evil intentions? How can you love someone, and let that love be swallowed by bitterness and greed? How can you love someone, and suffer to hear ill spoken of them? How can you love someone one day, and the next day want to cut them out of your life? A recipient of heart surgery survives on average for five years after it. How numb must we be to risk such operations on ourselves?
I have been lucky that the people I have chosen to love have been prepared to love me. I have been graced with kind, deep, and beautiful souls. It is very hard to love in the face of hate. I admire anyone who tries. But I have found, in my own life, that as I have become ready to love, I have found people who have been ready to love me. As soon as I was ready to heal, forgive, and treasure, I discovered people who were capable of healing, forgiving, and treasuring me. Break-ups are an opportunity to learn these gifts. If we can let someone go and still love them, then our love grows stronger. If we hate them for leaving us, our love shrivels. An upward spiral or a downward spiral - the choice belongs to us.
Madonna
Edvard Munch