This has been a very bizarre week for me. I guess, with this time of year, many people can say the same thing. Next week is a ten-year anniversary of mine and a friend who knew this asked me what have I learned the most in the last ten years. She asked me what that lesson was and any advice I would have for her. To be honest, that question blind-sighted me. I was very unprepared and had to stop and think about it. Ten years ago, seemed like yesterday in some respects, and in others, it was another lifetime ago. The person I am now is not the person I was ten years ago. What would you say?
After some thought I have an answer: I think the thing I have learned the most these last ten years is how to love, and how to let someone else love me too. This answer surprised even me. We all know how to love. I have many friends, and family members, and even coworkers that I love dearly for many years. But the love I’m talking about is different. I am talking about unconditional love for myself, and for another. I guess the easy answer would be endurance. That is something I have learned over the last ten years too. Life brings many twists and turns to us all as we try to find our way. The only way to get to the other side is to endure and keep walking. Yet, the reason I say love is because it got me thinking how such a small little word truly does have power and can help us so very much, as I have witnessed in my life.
Ten years ago, I left the safety net of my home for what I thought would be an adventure. It turns out, I was right. I left my comfort zone to move across the country and start anew. It was me against the world, and I was ready for it. Haven’t we all felt like that at one point? However, soon I realized things were not so easy. I struggled financially, in a relationship, I lost a great many friends, moved many more times, and suffered significant loss and disappointment, and, through it all, I learned that love is more than caring for myself or another person. It is also about love and respect for ourselves and each other. Unfortunately, many of us seem to forget that part.
Life is so strange sometimes. In one day, it can lift you up with joy higher and higher as if you can soar to the stars with happiness. In that same day, a twisted turn of events can make you feel as if you are falling back down in a spiral of grief and sorrow until you are crushed and broken from it. The last ten years of my life, I can honestly say I have felt both extremes. I believe most people have and there are times we need each other to help us out from the rubble and back into the light. However, accepting that help and love from another can be very hard. At the time, it can be hard to see that by refusing the help and support of a loved one, you are actually building a wall between yourself and your loved ones. Learning to let others love me have been difficult in many ways. I have always been an independent thinker, a person who likes to ask a lot of questions but learn from my own mistakes. This, at times, has kept me from reaching out at hands wanting to pull me up. Over time, I learned to see that mistake. I hid from many people and drove the person I loved the most away. Another time, the person I loved the most had to learn that lesson too, so he had to step away. In time, this made us stronger independently, and together. Learning to respect and love myself has made me better capable and able to love another, and in turn, accept his love too.
Nicholas Sparks once said, “The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds.” This is what I have experienced too. Love doesn’t always come from where we expect it. I confess its hard for many people to look in a mirror and say they love themselves. But I do believe that if you work to find that love within you, or even, in another, and if you take care of that tender flame, then in time, you can turn that love into a strong blaze that can carry you through the good and hard times of your life. You never know where life is going to take you. That is one of my favorite things about living.
This holiday season, I challenge everyone to take a moment and look around at the other people in your lives, or even some strangers somewhere and try to see the goodness, and kindness they have in themselves. Try to do something kind for another. We may not know each other, but one thing we all have in common is we all are in this thing called “life” together. We all endure good times, and really hard times. We all endure grief, pain, happiness, laughter, and not enough of us experience real unconditional love. We are all unique and beautiful in our own way. And just think, what would the world be like, if we all could love and respect one another unconditionally, despite the petty differences that seem to separate so many of us? I hope to see it one day. Maybe not this year, but who knows what the next ten years will bring. What do you think?
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