When I first started to work on my love book I had absolutely no idea that dating could be spiritual practice.I thought the pursuit of romantic love was just about me getting what I wanted: a post-card perfect relationship!
Like yoga, or meditation, dating takes discipline, strenght and determination. It takes discipline of the mind not to let every dating disaster turn into yet another self-pitying exercise. It takes strength to only follow the heart's path and not to let yourself believe the same stories your mind has been telling you for eons. It takes determination to see only the good in people, to see through their act, to catch a glimpse of their vulnerability and to whisper in their ear: 'I know you're only acting this way because you're afraid. I'm not here to judge you. I'm here to tell you that it's ok, there is a better way to live and I trust you will find it.'
But like any spiritual practice it's hard. I sometimes get annoyed with people.
Sometimes it's the people on the tube who are blocking the access to the gates or the escalators. I roll my eyes and say 'For fuck's sake...!' but then I immediately stop myself. What am I doing? I'm not this person. I'm not this angry person who's in a hurry to get somewhere, that's just a left over reaction from the person I used to be. And then I feel bad about it and to resolve it I decide to exaggerate and make fun of my reaction and I allow myself to scream and shout at them as much as I want in my head until I am at peace. I know my anger is not justified but I let it manifest until it rings stupid and and then I can let go of it.
I do the same with guys that piss me off. And there have been many who pissed me off. For leading me on, for over promising and under delivering, for standing me up, for wasting my time, for being too forward, or too shy, too keen or not keen enough, you name it! And I used to call them names during conversations with girlfriends (they are usually 'idiots' and 'dicks') as a way to vent my frustration and I thought that's ok because we all do it. No, it's not ok, because whatever energy we invest in every relationship it's just going to come back to us packaged in exactly the same way. More 'idiots' and 'dicks' until we learn the lesson.
So now when I feel anger bottling up, I try to imagine 'the dick' as somebody's son and somebody's brother, to focus on his humanity rather than on his lack of honesty. We all just see life from different angles and a dick is only a dick if I think he is. And until I learn to cut people some slack I doubt I'd see real love even if it hit me in the face.
And lastly dating is spiritual practice because people we meet don't tick all our boxes. Or even if they do at first, sooner or later cracks will start showing up and ruin their perfect image. And when they don't tick some boxes we need to open our eyes and see beyond those boxes. To see true value where it is and to learn little by little to like the things we don't like about the people we meet. To treat them with wabi-sabi love, which is a Japanese aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transcience and imperfection. We live in a society which dwells too much on perfection (forever unattainable) in a never ending pursuit for something we can only imagine to one day achieve. But realising that imperfection is what we should really be after, is a blessing still camouflaged to many.
And that's why dating is spiritual practice. Because it's not a matter of you versus me, but a matter of me versus me. And that's the kind of battle I find most difficult to fight...
No comments:
Post a Comment