I write 1-minute insights daily. Below are my latest. Like? Enter your email to get updates.
I help busy people do inner work.
I write 1-minute insights daily. Below are my latest. Like? Enter your email to get updates.
The paradox of love is that the deeper you’re in it, the more vulnerable you are to the pain of its loss.
That’s what makes love so scary.
Its impermanence. Its fragility. The fact that it comes with no guarantee.
People promise forever… to have and to hold, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live… and yet, often end up getting divorced well before they’re anywhere close.
And it doesn’t take many deep experiences of pain before guardrails are built.
And what many people might do is put a throttle on their love. Hold back. Build safety mechanisms that prevent them from going all in and risk feeling a proportionally deep pain again.
But… that’s the paradox of love. The less vulnerable you are to the pain of its potential loss… the more shallow the love will feel.
And shallow love is no way to love.
It is indeed as Lord Tennyson suggests, “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Maybe it’s just that we shouldn’t promise forever… and should promise instead to always love fully. No throttles. No holding back. No assumption that now will take care of forever.
Just the promise of no guardrails. Not with you. Not in any of the renewing nows.
Just a limitless sky above and bottomless pit of the emotional spectrum.
For you. For me. For us.
P.s. This idea is what inspired the poem, Don’t Say Forever.
When somebody you love turns and walks away… they don’t take your love with them.
Your love is exactly that… love that’s made and expressed by you… for you… within you.
What that person did was give your love a mirror to look into… a love to emulate… a love full of permission to model yours against.
What that person did was help you grow your love… realize a more full version of your love… express the unhindered, unrestricted, unapologetic form of your love.
And because they helped you unleash this elevated version of your love… you love them for that… and they became the target and focus of its powers.
But they do not become the possessors of it.
…They simply take the mirror and model with them when they turn and walk away.
It’s up to you now to become that version of yourself independently… to express a love at that level that simply overflows—not targeting any one person in particular—but rather one that radiates towards everyone you cross paths with…
One that allows you to become the loving person your best version knows you can be.
P.s. This is a response piece to the poem I wrote yesterday.
You’ll be back you say
As an unmissable plan
A stage. A promise. A DJ.
Rips you away.
Six hours we danced
A primal awakening
Lost. Forgotten. Found.
You—the light; my now.
I learned everything about you
Yet learned nothing at all
Stomping. Screaming. Your sound.
An ancestral introduction.
The ecstatic in you
Brought out the ecstatic in me
Mud. Goosebumps. Aroused.
…To stop that? Leave?
But plan triumphed over presence
And this, too, must end
Release. Detach. Allow.
It never gets easier.
And me? Never better.
…Back to phase: mend.
P.s. You can read all of my poems here.
You are so much more likely to find the love of your life while you’re in love with life.
Think about who you are when you’re in love…
Radiant. Energetic. Generous. Bold. Excited. Kind. Helpful. Cute. Funny…
And I suspect a lot of people mistakingly think they need to be in love with a person in order to express this elevated side of themselves.
But the truth is, you just need to be in love with life.
And if you can figure out what makes you come alive and express yourself in the above ways…
I suspect the love of your life will finally figure out that you’re the one they’ve been waiting / looking for.
A friend and I got to talking about memento mori—the Latin phrase that means “Remember your mortality.”
I asked if she had ever heard of the Memento Mori Calendar. She said no. After I explained what it was, she said, “Oh no… that would freak me out!”
To which I replied, “That’s the point!”
You get the Memento Mori calendar, not for decoration, aesthetics, or because it’ll be a fun coloring activity for you to do… but precisely so that it’ll freak you out.
…And hopefully so much so that you’ll get busy living your life to the fullest. With fewer hesitations… more bold choices… and no regrets left when your time comes.
Because your time will come.
…It’s not a question of if… only a question of during which dot on the calendar.
A good practice after an experientially rich weekend, is to deliberately and carefully store a key moment or two into your long term memory banks.
What you do is simple… carefully review the experience in full and narrow in on the moment(s) you want to save.
Replay them as vividly as you can… inviting all of your senses to participate.
And then—and this is the key—imagine yourself remembering that moment far into the future.
Repeat both of these steps for as long as it feels appropriate for you.
And if you don’t, all that’ll happen is the moment(s) will get picked for you (or none will get picked at all). For better or for worse…
Two of my friends have been butting heads recently.
And it’s for no reason other than their personalities clash. And even though they’ve been friends for years… they’ve also been evolving for years.
It’s nothing malicious… they just don’t agree on things… and feel more strongly about their opinions… and don’t understand why the other person misconstrues or misunderstands what they say and feel.
And here’s the thing: that’s okay.
Not all of your friends will be friends for life.
You will evolve. They will evolve.
You’ll slowly get pulled in the direction of your ever changing tastes and preferences and ideas and goals and unique circumstances.
…And so will they.
Sometimes, those directions stay aligned for a lifetime. And other times they stay aligned for a season or chapter of your life.
…And that’s okay.