Live the Questions
“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart, and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
This is my very favorite portrait.
PHOTO BY JEREMY COWART | www.JEREMYCOWART.com
It was created by one of my very favorite artists, and it first crossed my path just as I was getting ready to sit with him for my own portrait.
I was stunned when I saw it.
If you're a regular reader here, you know that I have long loved a man from afar, that I'm healing many deep wounds that have kept me from ever having love in my life, and that I've discovered the powerful truth that when I have a dream I can see clearly - when I spend my time and energy seeing and feeling every detail of that dream - it materializes before me like magic.
My deepest dream, though, the love I long to have in my life, is one I was not able to see.
When I sat down to imagine it, there simply was not a clear picture.
It was obscured by trauma ... A lifetime of unimaginably deep wounds and vicious lies and paralyzing fear.
While my heart has known that love from the moment it walked into my life three days before Christmas of 2013, I could not create a picture of what it would be.
I couldn't see it.
I couldn't feel it.
There was simply a haze.
I was speechless when I came across this portrait the night before I was to sit down with the man who created it.
Years before, he had created this stunning reflection of my dream ... Exactly the way it appeared to me.
Right down to its subject being the man who walked into my life three days before Christmas of 2013.
So, let me tell you why there is such profound wisdom in those words of Rilke.
I've spent the past 4 1/2 years living the questions.
Living in the space of not being able to see that dream, and for the first year, intentionally living in the space of not knowing what the story was with the man at the center of it, or what may or may not be possible.
Embracing, for the first time ever in my life, everything I felt and knew - because it's what I felt and knew - without criticizing or minimizing or dismissing it, or stopping to ask if it "should" be what I feel.
Fully embracing my heart and living in mystery is the most miraculous place I've ever lived.
It takes my breath away when I stop to look at the things I've learned in that space.
The things I've learned listening to my own heart above absolutely anything else.
The things I've learned loving someone from afar ... Knowing that's where I needed to be at this point on my journey, despite our culture that screams I should give it up and find something "real."
Let me assure you: I will take this beautiful time alone discovering my heart and the truth of love over the vast majority of the relationships I saw in my young life. I have seen the relationships that are born of the things I grew up understanding love to be, and I want no part of them.
I'm having to learn love from scratch, because the things I grew up calling by that name were no part of love.
I have to know the truth of love before I'll be able to create the relationship I want and deserve, and I promise you I will not be settling for less than that.
It's funny - and telling about the voices I've had around me most of my life - exactly one person in my lifetime has ever offered me the well-worn advice to "never settle."
It was the guy in this portrait.
This time of discovery and mystery is so precious.
First and foremost, I've learned that we are always living in mystery, and therefore in infinite possibility. That with very few exceptions, like someone no longer being on this planet (and even there, hell, I don't have all the answers!), we simply cannot know that something is impossible.
I've learned that my life opens up in ways I never imagined possible when I am embracing what I love and following my heart.
I have watched things and people appear and dreams unfold that I would never have thought could be.
All from simply listening to my own voice and following my own heart over anyone else’s.
I've learned that I grew up understanding control to be love.
That so many of our well intended words and actions born of "wanting the best for someone" are nothing more than running our own agenda.
I've been floored to discover the depth to which our culture understands control to be love, and the depth to which we expect others to fit into the mold we create for them.
I've had the gift of spending some time with people from my family and my past since I began this work, and I was able to see so clearly the level of control exerted. In some cases it was overt ... Vicious orders barked with demeaning names. In other cases it was much more insidious ... Questions designed to lead you to their conclusion.
These are the things I understood to be love for my whole life.
Had I been in relationships all these years, that's what I would've chosen.
Control. Possession. Fear.
In fact I have little doubt that I would've ended up dead, so deep was my understanding the cycle of control and abuse to be love.
I have no words for the unimaginable gift of being able to spend this time living the questions and loving someone from afar.
Tears flow at my gratitude that I had already chosen better voices to allow in my space, so that as I intentionally spent so much time in the space of not knowing what my beloved’s story was, no one was telling me I needed to find out and be "making something happen" or "getting over it."
I assure you, I needed to be doing neither of those things.
I am unimaginably grateful that in our social media world and with our numerous mutual friends who no doubt knew more than I did, I was still able to remain in that space of not knowing.
That space of mystery and questions is just vital.
It's in that space that I was able to discover, for the first time ever in my life, the truth of love.
I had absolutely no concept of what that was.
I only knew what it was to be controlled and hurt.
It was stunning to discover the powerful truth that as I stand in awe and wonder of the light of my beloved’s presence in this world - knowing there's not a single thing I would change about him - it's not that I'm seeing an idealized or perfect version of him.
The voices in my young life would most assuredly have told me I was ... That I was idealizing him and that I was in for a "rude awakening" to reality.
That entire idea rests on a foundation of control. It rests on an assumption and expectation that another being fit into a mold you created.
That is not the way I walk in the world.
It's not that I see a "perfect" version of him.
It's that I see him as a beautifully whole and complete creation like a mountain, where what I see and know is a tiny fraction of what’s truly there … A creation it would never occur to me to presume to change.
See that distinction?
The difference between seeing someone and believing you have ownership at a level of expecting them be what you want, versus seeing and embracing them as the beautiful creation they are, belonging completely to themselves with their own priorities and passions and wounds.
The very idea of looking at someone through the lens of "If only you would ... " - the way I was seen for my entire young life - is absolutely nothing but control.
There is no part of love in that.
People are simply not ours to own and shape that way.
There is a world of difference between seeing someone with expectations that they be what you want, and seeing them as their own creation and knowing it's YOUR responsibility to care for what you want and need.
I've had such beautiful opportunities to learn this with him, even from such a distance.
He's really terrible with email, for example!
Actually those are his words, and I prefer the much less judgmental understanding that he has other priorities and his email is likely overwhelming, as a fairly well-known and sought after person.
When I write him, whether it's with a request or something silly or giving a voice to my heart's deepest truth, I may or may not get a response (probably not), and may well never know if he even read it.
As with every single thing outside ourselves, his response is completely beyond my control.
Things that are beyond my control are not worth a single moment of my time or energy.
It’s also absolutely none of my business whether he reads my emails, or what he does with any of his emails.
I don't get to have any expectations about it.
Well, I could, I suppose, if I wanted to live a completely fucking miserable life! And man a lot of us do that.
Expectations are 100% control, and therefore 0% love.
You cannot imagine how much more beautiful life is when you simply know what's yours to own and control (you), and what's not (absolutely anything else).
In this case, then, I simply get to decide if I want to email him and live in the mystery of whether he's read it.
I do.
More often than not, I don't hear anything back ... But occasionally beautiful and deeply kind emails show up.
When they do, they’re words I can trust to my core, and never spend a single second wondering if he means them or really “wanted” to send them.
It’s a terrible thing when you grow up being “loved” from a place of obligation, with the narrative that love is a terrible and painful sacrifice.
You learn that loving you is a burden, and you can never, ever trust love, because you never know if someone is loving you because they want to, or because they feel they have to.
His rare and unimaginably kind words continue to heal a lifetime of shattering damage I sustained from “noble” and “sacrificial” love.
As I write these words, I'm looking up at two beautiful gifts he gave me: A piece he made of ink and watercolor when I had asked him to write something out for me, and a photo he sent me of a gift I'd given him, resting in his hand.
Both of those gifts involved waiting and living in mystery.
They both involved unanswered emails and wondering what was going to happen.
And both are more exquisite than I could ever have planned or imagined.
I would've missed so much had I spent my time and energy being frustrated about the timeliness of his responses, holding fast to my control and insistence on knowing, having expectations about something that will simply never be within my power.
I would’ve spent that time being miserable and missed the deep joy and peace it was completely within my power to experience, and likely would have created misery for the people around me by being bitchy and negative.
I also likely would never have received those beautiful gifts, because make no mistake … The bitchiness and negativity that comes from control and expectation destroys relationships.
I would have missed every single moment of these 4 1/2 years of discovery had I dismissed my heart, or endeavored to find out things I knew I needed not to know in the name of keeping my dreams "realistic."
I would have missed this whole healing journey had I not embraced mystery.
I simply could not have done this work in any other space.
I could not have learned the truth of love in relationship with someone ... Because I would have shattered both the relationship and them with the control that shattered me my whole life.
My heart always knows what I need ... And it is always, always right.
A little over a year ago, my dream that had been obscured for my whole life started becoming clear.
I could feel something shifting both inside me, and out in the world.
On one particularly amazing day, I woke up from a vivid dream about my beloved. I was sitting at a table at some sort of event, and he came by and swept me up to dance.
I was completely panicked, screaming "But I don't know how to dance!"
"Neither do I," he said.
"All I do is take the next step."
Oh my goodness.
I will never forget waking up and grabbing my phone to capture that wisdom.
Later that day, because this is totally how my life works, I randomly heard from him.
Let me just tell you, I rarely hear from him, and never hear from him out of the blue.
He sent me a podcast interview he'd done, in which he talked about some of his story he said he doesn't talk about often. It's worth noting that he didn't post this interview anywhere - just randomly sent it to me - and that he had shared those parts of his story with me in our very first conversation.
It's stunning to my heart that tends to imagine I'm nothing to him - because I learned in my young life that I was nothing to the people who mattered to me - that clearly there is something in me that creates a safe space for him.
It’s also stunning for me to consider that he had no reason to send me that interview, beyond “I want you to know me.”
That possibility is completely miraculous to me.
At the end of the interview, he was asked what advice he'd give his 25 year-old self. I swear to you, showing up the very day I woke up from that dream, his advice was pretty much "Just take the next step."
He also cited that beautiful Rilke quote ... Encouraging us to take that step without knowing everything.
As for my dream, I can see more and more of it all the time.
It flashes before me as clear as day in a million different moments, the answers to the questions I've lived these past 4 1/2 years gradually appearing as my heart heals in the space of the infinite possibility that is the unknown.
Embracing mystery is powerful.
Live the questions.
They are life's most precious gifts.