Last November I had a brilliant idea: When my lease was up in April, I’d move to a house with a yard to accommodate my active pup and give me a little breathing space. How hard would it be to find a cute little house in this area?
Answer: 5 months. 10 lost deals. Every weekend, multiple open houses.
When I FINALLY found a place, the guy who partnered with me on this deal asked me, “How long do you think you’ll live here?” I didn’t even hesitate. “Forever!” I answered. The thought of going through this again has pretty much NO appeal to me. Ever.
I was thinking about this concept of “forever” the other day, brought to mind again while doing the endless unpacking (I repeat – never going through this again!) and came across the book “Love You Forever”, a very sweet book I’d read to my kids, and dare say, never got through without a tear in my eye or a knot in my throat. In the book, the mother, rocking her newborn says:
I’ll love you forever,
I’ll like you for always,
As long as I’m living
My baby you’ll be.
(Excuse me a moment while I go take care of something in my eye…)
I get this, at a heart level. I know the truth in it.
And then I think of other relationships where I vowed “forever”, and they just didn’t work out. I try and try to figure that out, but it remains a bafflement to me. The answer to my bafflement lies exactly in what I said: “I try to figure it out.” I am trying to use my brain to answer an issue of the heart. It’s using the wrong tool – like using a hammer to repair a watch. Not going to end pretty.
Time is such an interesting and relative concept. “Forever” to a five-year-old might be one day. Forever when you are wanting something to end is an eternity. And forever from a parent to a child is a heart pledge, ignoring the constraints of space and time.
I’ve had businesses I thought that would last forever. A marriage and many relationships where I shared the same thoughts. And when they were over, it was devastating. How could this happen?
Time, the wisdom of aging, and the gift of being able to move from head to heart brings clarity, if not understanding. There are things I may never understand in this lifetime, but I am learning, by looking for the gift within, to find the grace in the encounter. Sometimes the blessing is in the undoing of something. Sometimes it’s in its brief encounter. My therapist says you are together “as long as you both shall learn.” And sometimes, if you’re very lucky, it just may come back to you when you are better able to allow it.
One very key thing to remember, as Eckhart Tolle talks about in “The Power of Now” is that now is all we really have. Nothing happened in the past: it happened in the now. Nothing happens in the future: It happens in the now. The more you can come to that realization and live in the moment, the more peace, clarity and power you will have in your life.
Release the need to know and understand. Use your heart to find the answers. Keep your head where your feet are. Stay in the now.
And, if you run into my landlord, avoid the conversation on how long I think “forever” is.
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