It’s all about joy!

Most of my friends and family know that I have an impossible crush on a guy who lives in California. We met in the most unexpected of ways and through a funny twist of fate, have actually had occasion to see each other a handful of times over the last three months. Unfortunately, this guy is just not available. He’s as emotionally inaccessible as he is locationally so (we live 3,000 miles apart). Since I’ve stopped taking on “special projects” in the dating department, I’ve resigned myself to the idea that this guy and I can probably only ever be friends.

*sigh*

Despite how much I love looking into his brilliant blue eyes or listening to the soothing tone of his voice as he speaks, I’m actually rather OK with the fact that the two of us can’t be together. Better still, when I saw him this past Saturday and we spent the day with each other, I had a magnificent realization: perhaps it’s not him I’m so drawn to (bear with me here…). Perhaps it’s the way I feel when I’m around him that has me captivated.

On Saturday, the two of us spent an effortless twelve hours together. We laughed, we talked, we debated, we hugged, I cried, he meditated, we ate, we learned, we walked (and walked and walked!), we sat, we laid (down)…we lived like we’d known each other for decades, and I loved every single second of it! When with him, I feel completely at ease - more at ease than I’ve ever felt around anybody in my life. And that’s when it hit me: maybe what I’m looking for in a partner isn’t so much him as it is the feeling I get when I’m around him. That feeling that I can be completely myself and feel totally accepted. His energy, his aura…his way of sharing space with other humans is so perfectly respectful that I couldn’t imagine anyone feeling uncomfortable around him. He’s all but made an art of it, and that’s what I want to experience every day for the rest of my life.

So what can I do with all that, you might ask? Since I believe in the law of attraction and the magic of manifestation, I’m going to take that feeling and combine it with visualization exercises. I’m going to remember how I feel when I’m around him really stay in that good feeling space. I’m then going to imagine that I feel like that every day, and that the feeling comes from spending time with my most perfect life partner. I’ve learned through experience that when I get into a feeling space as I visualize, the things I desire manifest much more quickly. (Yes, I’ll keep actively dating, too, because otherwise I’d just be visualizing by myself in my living room! Remember that the law of attraction requires us to take action. There’s a great interview with James Arthur Ray that offers some vignettes on how to make the law of attraction work in your favor every single time. Check it out here.)

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with some lyrics from a favorite song of mine (and perhaps, one of my partner’s, too):

Paperweight (Joshua Radin & Schuyler Frisk)

been up all night staring at you

wondering what’s on your mind

i’ve been this way with so many before

but this feels like the first time

you want the sunrise to go back to bed

i want to make you laugh

mess up my bed with me

kick off the covers i’m waiting

every word you say i think

i should write down

don’t want to forget come daylight

happy to lay here

just happy to be here

i’m happy to know you

play me a song

your newest one

please leave your taste on my tongue

paperweight on my back

cover me like a blanket

mess up my bed with me

kick off the covers i’m waiting

every word you say i think

i should write down

don’t want to forget come daylight

and no need to worry

that’s wastin’ time

and no need to wonder

what’s been on my mind

it’s you

it’s you

it’s you

every word you say i think

i should write down

don’t want to forget come daylight

and i give up

i let you win

I recently took on a new facet to my job that has me interacting with five times as many people as I used to on a regular basis. It’s been both rewarding and challenging, with the biggest challenges coming from the varied (and what I’d call difficult) personalities I’ve come across. These types of situations are the ones that force me to put my money where my mouth is and really “walk my talk.” I’ll admit, I tend to be a bit wobbly at first.

The past three weeks were particularly challenging for me. I found myself spiraling downward in an increasingly negative cycle of thoughts, actions and emotions that I wanted to blame on the people and things around me. I wasn’t responding to adversity with the “I never mind what happens” mentality I slowly began embracing a couple months ago. Instead, I was attaching myself to the adversity and getting wrapped up in a heightening day-to-day drama that I’d named myself the star of. What’s more, most of the words that came out of my mouth to others were about the drama and its various players - what they had or hadn’t done to tick me off. Of course, misery loves company, so while I was talking to anyone who’d listen about my trials and tribulations, I was attracting like-minded sympathizers eager to jump in. Together, we added enough fuel to the fire to light up a city for days.

Well, after a climax early last week, I decided enough was enough. Everything I was experiencing and feeling was in my direct control, and all that I profess to know about joy told me so. However, my attitude for the past few weeks had been growing increasingly negative. While I could sense it happening, I didn’t do a lot to break free from it. Instead I just flowed along with it.

Then something great happened: in reading the last few chapters of a book I’d started months ago, I hit upon exactly the chapters I needed to be reading in the midst of all this. While a few things stood out that I won’t soon forget, by far the biggest had to do with (of course!) love.

For me, when I get wrapped up in negative situations or mindsets, I lose focus. I become obsessed with exactly what’s happening as it’s happening. I forget to remain objective and to simply observe things as they unfold. I become judgmental and tend to take other people’s actions personally. I begin allowing myself to feel victimized. I want the situation or the other people to change, rather than feeling I’m capable of change. Well, the thing that jumped out at me in the book I was reading reminded me that in these very tender moments, the best - most powerful - thing I can do is to ask myself (regardless of what’s happening): How can I add love to this situation?

When I read those words, it’s like a gigantic light bulb went on over my head.

How can I add love to this situation?

In asking myself that question - even as I sat reading the book - I could immediately feel my power come back to me. Asking that question took me out of a victim role because I knew it was my turn to act. I gave myself cause to act: I knew I needed to figure out what I could do - not what others could do - to add love to the things that were happening around me!

What does adding love to a situation look like?

• Maybe it’s simply not reacting to another person’s actions that would have otherwise set me off.
• Maybe it’s proactively reaching out to someone who’s acting in a way that I’d deem as difficult and seeing if I can do anything for them.
• Maybe it’s suspending judgment of what I think “difficult” is!
• In everyday situations, maybe it’s just by smiling at a stranger who’d been blankly staring I my direction.

There are countless ways to add love to a situation, and by asking myself how I can do it, I immediately bring the focus back to something positive: LOVE. I align myself with the greatest force there is, and reawaken to the idea that I’m an extension of God. In a God-like world, there is no fear, no adversity, and there are no cheap dramas. There is only love, and love brings joy.

The next time I feel myself getting wrapped up in negativity or slowly spiraling downward as I did in the last few weeks, I’ll know how to reverse it. I’ll just ask myself how I can add love to the situation and have faith that whatever I’m moved to do will be infinitely more positive than any response I could have otherwise had.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to spread some love…

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the idea of real (unconditional) love as it relates to my decision to stay single. In the last six months, I’ve learned that what I thought was love in the past wasn’t real love at all. Instead, it was conditioned, or as I termed it in a post entitled “Can Love Be Measured,” a variation of the “what’s in it for me?” syndrome.

Every romance I’ve had up to this point answered a need I had. Usually, that need was loneliness. Sometimes I’m sure I said it was because I met someone with whom I had a lot in common and whose company I enjoyed. Hidden beneath whatever overt excuses I gave, though, were hundreds of layers of sub-needs stemming from subtle insecurities and fear. In most cases, whether I was aware of it or not, I was looking to someone else to define and validate me; to make me feel safe and loved.

I remember one point a couple years ago when a friend asked me what I was so afraid of when it came to being single. At the time, I had one foot in and one foot out of a relationship that no longer felt right. Not having as much self-awareness as I do now, I confidently answered, “I just love to love.” She challenged me by asking why I couldn’t love on my own. I retorted, “I can! I love myself… I just enjoy having someone else to share stuff with.” Truth be told, up until last December when I had an epiphany about being single, I never knew how to enjoy all aspects of life by myself. I felt I needed someone else to bounce things off of - someone to give my life relevance and to provide context for my experiences.

Being single for a string of months, though, forced me to get comfortable on my own. With no prospects on the horizon, and high standards for what an ideal romance would look like, I started to settle into my own skin. It helped that I was, at the time, reading great book after book on what real love is and how it’s the cornerstone of true spiritual, mental, and emotional growth. I started to recognize that all the perceived flaws in my previous relationships had two things in common: me, and the fact that I never felt good enough.

Back then, I was living in a constant state of lack in my mind, and was looking to romantic partners to bridge the inherent gaps in my life. I give them all credit, though, because for the most part they did a terrific job making me feel beautiful, valuable, smart, sexy, strong, funny, appreciated, etc.

At least for a little while.

Then, as the romance started to fade, my sense of lack invariably became more vivid. Eventually, it’s all I could sense, and as it overwhelmed me, I systematically pushed each partner away thinking it was them. Somehow they weren’t enough for me. Now I know better. Now I know that I was never quite enough for myself.

“I love myself.” At various points in my life, I honestly thought I knew what those three words meant. However, it’s only now that I’m starting to touch upon what the concept of true, unconditional love means. I also know that even though I understand the concept more now than before, I don’t feel much closer to achieving it. See, doing so would mean accepting all of who I am. Some days I think I come close. Other days, though, I feel I have hundreds of miles to go.

So is it really possible to love someone else if I can’t completely love myself? Is one possible without the other?

This brings me to my next, bigger question: is it ever actually possible to achieve real love in an intimate (romantic) relationship?

The optimist in me would like to think “yes,” but the realist in me is screaming “no!”

Real Love & Romance At Odds. In order to be in a truly unconditional relationship with someone else, complete acceptance of current circumstances at all times is required. It means loving another person no matter what happens and no matter what they do. Conceptually, most people are fine with this. In reality, though, we’ve all seen what happens when one person does something the other doesn’t like. Fights erupt, feelings get hurt, egos are bruised, and sometimes the grand culmination is a bitter breakup.

There’s nothing unconditional about that.

Another Angle. However, there’s another part of me that wonders if unconditional love is even necessary in romantic relationships. I’m starting to think that the whole reason we pair off with others is to learn, through their eyes, how to see ourselves more kindly. Maybe the purpose of romance isn’t to love someone else unconditionally, but instead to expand our view of how we can better love ourselves.

“Entering into a committed relationship is in fact a spiritual journey that we undertake with another person. By being able to love and care for someone else with an open heart, we will find that we can reach a greater level of personal transformation, evolving along our path and learning powerful lessons about ourselves that we might not otherwise be able to do on our own.” DailyOm

What do you think?