Dear Diary…
This morning I argued with a friend and something he said stuck with me. He said to me “ I am so mad at you Yvonne but I have a soft spot for you, see that’s why I want to build a life with you because I always want to forgive you, no matter how mad I am at you. In life, you need to find a partner you are always willing to readily forgive much more than you are willing to be angry with”. Of course, I apologized for my shortcomings and promised to commit to changed behavior because i valued his honesty. He got me thinking about a lot of things one of which was the truth in the quote by Plato “At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet”, his words were the most profound poetic words a man had said to me this year and if I could will my heart into loving him, I would have but I can’t and I have come to understand that, that’s alright.
Since all I do is think about life, I further wondered why it was so hard to love the people who are logically right for us, the people we have great conversation with at every encounter as opposed to those who spend more time thinking about what to say next but end up saying nothing that really counts, the people with whom we enjoy the mutual exchange of vulnerability that beckons intimacy without judgement- their every word spells here are my most shameful secrets drip by drip so please, hand me yours because I welcome them without judgment. Their effort too does not go by unnoticed — yes effort compounded by the respect for boundaries and oh! their desire to keep growing in an attempt to be better is just delicious. Alas! there is no zing.
This experience like many others had me reminiscing about the time when I was in such a position, giving the very best of me but that was and isn’t always enough. In hindsight, I laugh at how gullible I once was but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I simply came to understand the hard way that the quest to be totally honest and committed in every endeavor is one ventured on solely for one’s own satisfaction, there isn’t always a reward for the choice to live this way but do it anyway if it aligns with the values you have chosen in life. In my younger years I thought if I was generous, understanding, faithful, loyal and every other behavior that is deemed morally upright, I would be rewarded with a lot of good, top of the list was an equally honest and committed partner. I have come to learn that the only reward I get is my own peace of mind and the satisfaction of knowing I choose to live my life the way I wanted to, a life lived in alignment with my values as a Christian, something that few can proudly say of their lives.
Whenever I think of values, I think of the woman who was asked by a god what she wanted most in this world, after telling him what she desired, the god further asked her what was stopping her from acquiring this item, she said it belonged to another and in her world, it was a crime punishable by death, despite this items ability to transform her life. The god offered to free her of confines of societies views of right and wrong , he told her that if she wanted to get it, she could do so without fear of death or anyone other than herself knowing what she did. The only catch was that only she would live with the knowledge that the item wasn’t her’s to own. She refused to take up this offer so the god asked why, she said she was not one to take that which did not belong to her. This woman would not steal because of her value system, in the absence or presence of death or any other consequence, she wouldn’t steal anyway. What are your values- the standards you uphold regardless of the losses or gains you encounter in the road of life? Something to think about.
Sometimes you live an honest life only to be cheated at every turn, you love loyally and give your all but you reap nothing but pain repeatedly, should this change you?. Not to sound glum but bad things happen to good people, sometimes repeatedly. However, there is a lot of growth in every experience, more so in the bad experiences than in the good ones. The good ones go by so fast but the bad ones, we relive and in the process , we must analyze what we could have done better or perhaps what we could have done differently. Then there is my least favorite activity, the call for the courage to accept that there was nothing we could have done to be assured of the desired outcome and this is a recurring truth to carry through our days on earth. I have grown the most during my lowest points this year. I have learnt to listen to others when I messed up so I could change in ways that really matter for the survival of my relations.
Sometimes, it’s us, we are the problem and we will repeatedly end up at the same spot until we stop long enough to listen to others when they say hey! maybe you are a little self-centered or maybe you need to reflect on why you opt for struggle love over easy love, why you keep knocking on doors that refuse to open or ones that cannot open even if they wanted to because they simply do not know how! How about you put in the work to create that zing and love the one whose values are aligned with yours, how about you decide to grow and be the person you need to be to get and keep the things you have always wanted. What is really important to you and are you living in conjunction with it regardless of whether you will stand alone, remain poor, say no to a seemingly great love or whatever the uncomfortable situation you are likely to live through?.
