Let there be spaces in your togetherness.
And let the winds of heaven dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but each one of you be
alone – even as the strings of a lute are alone though the quiver
with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not in each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the Cyprus grow not in each other’s shadows.
Kahlil Gibran’s words echo with raw truth in that relationships are built from a space of love and freedom. It starts first with you being complete in yourself and the ability to be whole without the other.
When we fill our relationships with attachment and expectations, or follow the social guidelines of what our roles should be in a relationship, we somewhere – without even knowing it – begin to stifle the relationship. We then allow our vulnerabilities to take over. It starts with a sense of ownership over the other, and in the name of connection, we often tend to become over protective, possessive and controlling to the point that the relationship, in its truest form, becomes an empty shell. Its there but its not there. And you are then forever grasping to find something that doesn’t exist. Bound by social norms, you hold tighter instead of looking inside to that space which could allow you both to grow and find love again.
For me, love has been about deep acceptance, about acknowledging and respecting the other, about space and freedom to grow together and apart. I am deeply grateful for the love I have in my life; we have built our relationship in knowing ‘we are one’ and we are ‘one’. I am blessed in our ability to laugh together, to stand strong for the other in times that test, to be at ease in our silence, and our ability to encounter each day in the now.
