My parents just left for Toronto. They came Thursday morning and stayed over at my place in New York for Easter.
There’s always some emptiness lingering when someone you’re very close with visits your home for the first time and then leaves. In the end, after all the hustling and effort to fill one’s life with stories and things, I guess what we really want is simply a sense of closeness with another human being.
In those final moments when I knew I would part with them again, with these people who know me so well (perhaps even better than I know myself at times) and who love me so much (perhaps even more than I love myself at times), it was suddenly so crystal clear to me what love really means.
To love means to settle, but not in a “I know I deserve better but I’m scared to be alone so I’m going to stick with him” sense. To love means to settle, as in, to let go of the little things, those things that we think matter but really don’t. To fully give in to another person, to realize that what happens from there may be outside of your control. To relinquish the fear that he or she may not love you back, and just give. Today I realized we cannot love without first choosing to give without hoping for something in return.
When we live alone, it’s so easy for us to build up walls, to become defensive after all the hurt. After all, it’s an adaptive strategy to ensure survival. It’s hard for us to take a step back and catch ourselves being selfish, being judgmental, being clouded by our own ideas of what we think we’re looking for when it comes to love. But this means we end up living in a box. We lock ourselves up inside and feed our thoughts to our surroundings only to have them bounce back at us and reinforce our preconceived (and possibly erred) notions that we know best.
This weekend with my parents have made me realize that I’ve been looking for love in all the wrong places, all along. Love isn’t found in bars, or online. Love isn’t found in text messages, in all the silence between text messages, in smileys and winks and hearts and selfies. Love isn’t found on paper, in degrees or in dollars. Love isn’t found in numbers -in how much you date and how long. Love is found in effort. In all of us trying to be our best, to ourselves and to each other. Today, not tomorrow.
Sincerely,
V.
Valoress 