As far as love goes, like most girls of the 50’s, I grew up believing in the fairytale—a settled constant with one true love that lasts forever and is our all—a knight in shining armor who will take care of us. In that year of learning to paint I met and fell in love with the man I thought was my healthier, adult, modern version of that. I believed I was finally getting it right and had found a love that would last forever. We married and, after several years, moved to southern Utah for his job where, in a few short months, my fairytale ended.
I’ve lived long enough now that I’ve come to understand there are many small deaths in a lifetime, with plenty to heal and much letting go to be done. Although our culture tells us we’re meant to seek permanence, I fear that’s a myth. I’m starting to believe we are designed to shift and grow, die and be reborn, expose new layers of work, like life itself forces us to do. We are, each and every one of us, incredible works in progress. It can be very painful but I suspect we will be presented with the same lessons over and over again until we learn them. Or not.
But left there alone in that desert, far, far away from my home, my friends and family, everything I’d ever known, the sea, completely and utterly alone, I railed at the gods, at the sheer injustice of it. Why had I been brought to this barren wasteland only to be left (I’m sorry, Utah, I came to experience you as far more than that, but not in the beginning)? Why indeed? Believing in an active and benevolent universe as I do, I had to look at the possibility this was in fact the aim and for my greater good. Despite my shattered heart, I knew the time had come to face myself. I had to do the work of figuring out what lessons were being presented that I was clearly not getting.
Walking in that parched land, among the canyons of the ancients, I came to know I was abandoned to mother earth so that I could make my peace with abandonment; to forgive; to heal the past. My heart was broken open with the hope it could stay open. I was to befriend my own silence, to find comfort within my own interior. I was being told to take care of myself—to be responsible for my own life, to be unafraid. Within these lessons I learned compassion, acceptance and unconditional love.
Anthony De Mello says in The Way To Love that we mistakenly, “… try to build a steady nesting place in the ever-moving stream of life.” He asks us to examine our belief that we can’t live or be happy without a particular person. He maintains that genuine love exists only within freedom and in liberating our beloved from the lover (that would be us).
I believe we hold to others in an effort to deny the very aloneness we’re here to embrace. We are born alone and we will die alone. I think we’re meant to do a lot of our living alone as well. When we have fostered a good relationship with ourselves and love the other not from need or exploitation, but from a genuine desire for their good, we have no need of fairytales because reality is better.
Bottom line, we are our own knights. That doesn’t mean we can’t share our lives, but we are the true love stories. It is our love that will last forever.
Absolutely gorgeous photo’s. I like the one of the pictographs, the best!
Thanks Chip! I’ll bet you recognized some of the places. The rock art is in Three Mile Canyon. You’ll be in this exact landscape next week!
I believe that the purpose of life is to seek joy and to help others do the same. Your story follows this path. Thanks for your help.
Thanks, Craig. I’m glad you think so.
We are supposed to shift, grow, die and be reborn? Jeane, where does this philosophy come from? Is this a metaphor for learning? I’m leary of people telling me what I’m “supposed” to do without telling me why.
Yes, I completely know what you mean. I’ve found using the collective “we” problematic, too, since I can’t speak for all of us. This blog is about the philosophies I’ve developed over the course of my life. Some of these continue to change. I don’t mean to be telling people “what is”, but rather what my experience has led me to believe. And I can’t just refer to “I” and “me” because I mean more than that. Thinking of it as a metaphor for learning is probably most accurate.
Those photographs are so beautiful and wow you should be writing some poems or something lol
Yes, Utah is a beautiful place. I think I’ll leave the poetry to Barbara and Alvaro!
I adore the Anthony De Mello references…so perfect in thier twining the pieces together of souls/lifes mysterious motion. Some of us struggle against the constant change that is inevitably life for longer than others is all…
Love and light
Grace
Oh, I know. I’ve been facing aspects of myself lately that I’ve been pretty unconscious about–how I try to control life so I won’t be hurt. All the layers of healing are amazing. There’s always more work to be done. The key, I think, is compassion for others and for self. None of us is perfect. I’ve had a hard time embracing my imperfections!
Productive folks aren’t born that way.These people become productive by creating the habit of doing stuff unsuccessful people don’t like to do.
I think facing ourselves is the biggest hurdle.
Hello! I felt compelled to comment a little thank you for all your effort. I love your blog! Keep the posts coming!
Thank you Elanor. There will definitely be more. I’m committed. Thank you for reading and commenting. Glad you love the blog!
I love that you reply to those of us who leave a reply. Above I thought of the woman who fell from the sky as you spoke of compassion for others and for self. We have come a long way from there and I adore seeing that you love yourself and it is truly good!
Well, I’m still working on that. Wish I could say I was DONE! But, as I said, I think we’re all works in progress. It makes life very interesting to keep painting our “canvas” until we go.
I totally agree with your second pharagraph in this blog. I truly believe that we are here, well let me put it this way: I was onced asked: “What is Life about to you?” and my reply was that life is one big lesson. We are here to learn and we keep on learning until we get it right. “Works in Progress” as you have put it. We will go thru many things in our life time and with each of them we will learn something from it and become stronger or we will go thru something we wil not understand but know that it was taught to us for some reason and then move on. Move on to something new and learn again. That is what life is all about: “One Big Lesson or better put Many Big Lessons!”
My Buddhist teacher used to call lessons “the work” and she always referred to “practice.” I’ve come to believe there are few lessons we learn solidly, forever. Because we shift and grow so much, because the same lesson will be presented to us on so many different levels, I think what we are doing is practicing the work–practicing the lessons. I’m not sure we so much “get it right” as we keep practicing getting it right–that two steps forward, one step back kind of thing. By looking at it this way I’m able to be more compassionate when something that SHOULD be learned/known, slips through the cracks of my behavior yet again. Does that make sense?