I have not been sleeping well lately. It always happens when I come here, to the south east coast of France. I wake up often in the middle of the night. Some nights I don’t sleep at all. The weather has been cool here, but I have not often worn a jacket. I feel warm all the time, like I’m constantly running a fever. This is just how I am in this part of the world, it’s strange. Energy runs through my body constantly. Even when I am tired, I still feel that I have excess energy to burn. It wakes me up at night, it makes me forget to eat and somehow makes me feel alive. Maybe that’s why I like to come back here – because I somehow learn how to feel again.
This morning, I woke up at 1am. Sometimes, when I wake up at this time, I rub my eyes, sit up and decide to listen to the silence. There, I can often hear what my heart is saying. Something that I have a habit of ignoring during the day, when my logical mind likes to analyse, calculate and plan. This morning, I realised something about love.
Ah I thought so this is what it feels like to give yourself to love. It doesn’t feel like in the movies at all… it’s somehow better.
Let me explain.
I woke up in a dream and saw the person I loved in front of me, clearly as if he were actually there. He looked so ordinary. All the magic that I thought he had, was gone. His eyes were tired, his face was not as I had remembered it to be, and his arms were not as strong as I thought they were. In that moment, I saw underneath him… and I will admit, it was incredibly underwhelming. I felt a pang of shame and disappointment.
I still loved him, but why? He had nothing to give me, nothing that would fulfil me at all. The answer, surprisingly, came from him in the next moment. It’s you who is magic, I am only an ordinary man.
It hit me… that there is never any logic to the best decisions in life. In the past, I had always used my logical mind to decide things, and that had always rendered me disappointment, distrust, and that inner longing to search for something else. It’s because I was motivated by the thought that another person, place, or job would be able to fulfil me in some way. As if they had magic that I didn’t… but this is not true. The magic comes from me. It comes from within all of us.
I stared at his face a little longer, not wanting the dream to end… and I thought, if I truly love something then I won’t need anything from it. I would realise that I can fulfil my life completely with my own decisions, and I would decide to love others anyway.
A mind that feels the need to think everything through can be useful only to an extent. It can only ever predict, and can never allow you to discover something new. Suddenly, the game of life looked different to me. I was willing to accept a new adventure, willing to see this journey of mine this year from a different point of view. Instead of chasing, maybe I could take one step at a time and listen to my heart about the next direction to face. I wouldn’t know exactly where I’d end up, but maybe I didn’t need to know that.
Calmness came over me, and I felt tired again.
It’s as if the pressure was off. I didn’t have to project into the future and know the outcome of any decision I make today, because there never really is any outcome. As long as we breathe, we have an opportunity to choose the life we want from the situation we are in. Suddenly, the heaviness of choosing one thing, one person, one place did not seem so daunting. It was only to be the next choice, for the next moment, and nothing more.
The rest… well, I’d just have to let life surprise me.
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