“Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Rumi
Think about that. Reread it. Let it sink in. Take a deep breath and read it again.
This hit me like a speeding train right the first time I read it. I keep ruminating on it, turning it over and over, because it's so counter-intuitive and counter-cultural. Especially when it comes to love! Yet it resonated with me so deeply.
Ladies, how much of life do we spend trying to control things external to ourselves, looking for things outside ourselves to satisfy our deepest longings? Our hearts get broken, and the walls get put up. We spin our wheels and spin our wheels and they just keep on spinning. Men can’t be trusted. Men are the worst! And then we despair. Will I ever find the man of my dreams? Will I always be stuck and single? (More on that later.) Has the last good man been taken by my friend who just got married? What is she doing that I’m not doing? What does she have that I don’t have? And away we go...
I hear you!
There's good news! As my grandma used to say, “There's a lid for every pot.” (Now, whether you're the lid or the pot, I'll leave that for you to decide. And I’m not saying that there’s only one lid for every pot. More on that here.) Ladies, there are more than 7 BILLION people on this earth. And you think your friends are just better at this than you are?! No way.
Let's pause for a second and let me blow your mind (this completely blew my mind wide open):
You could be married right now if you wanted to be.
Are you with me? Let me explain. Have you ever gone on a date with a man who was just goo-goo-gaga over you? Thought you were the bee's knees and the cat's meow? And you were decidedly not into him. Why? Maybe he was too forward. Too familiar. Too whatever and you said, no thanks. It's all good. My point is simply to say that if marriage or a relationship were the goal, you could be right there, right now. But let me challenge you and propose that perhaps marriage and relationship in and of themselves are actually not the goal! Being with a man who makes you feel alive, who lights up your world and blows your socks off-- THAT'S the goal. And when you can keep that in mind as you go on dates, it might help you to have a more hopeful perspective. There are great guys out there. There are great gals out there! And you’ve got to believe that your person is looking for you the same way you’re looking for them.
So I'll say again, if marriage and relationship were the goal, you could be there already. I'm sure you have high school friends or college buddies for whom this is true: they got married in their late teens or early 20s to the only man or woman they've ever loved, had a few kiddos, and are maybe still living that happily (or unhappily) married life. I have several friends who got married early in the 20s and who are now divorced. A few are remarried and happy as ever. Because they learned the hard way that actually, marriage itself wasn’t the goal-- they wanted a kick-ass relationship with an incredible human. (Not that their exes weren’t great folks, just not their folks.)
So read Rumi again: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Take some time and reflect: what are the barriers you have built within yourself that are keeping you from the love you want? I’d love to hear from you!