SPARKS - Week 3

Week 3

Well, if you’ve been following along the SPARKS challenge, you’ll know at this point I was at week 3. And since I wanted all my SPARKS to have a trajectory where one risk leads to the next one, I looked at what I learned from Mike, the man I met and with whom I had a meal. Mike inspired me with his lack of anger or bitterness or even sadness with his ex-wife who cheated on him with his best friend while he was trucking along the east coast, doing his job. So I decided that I wanted to work on myself and have a healthier state after my last relationship.

I’ve always been a person who loved without desiring love, but it was very important to one woman I dated to desire love (and it’s natural). So I did. But desires create attachment and produce suffering. Though I don’t fully understand what happened, it ended, and I was ok because if you love someone you let them be happy with or without you. Then I was told I didn’t love because I wasn’t miserable. Then I became miserable. Then I was told get a grip it’s just a person. Interesting.

Regardless, I’m used to practicing detachment to things, and listening to Mike I was amazed at his detachment. After talking to Mike I spoke to a friend and she reminded me what love does. She said she learned to “be love and not desire it.” And that was it. The moment I heard that and did it (that very day), the burden of weighty emotion began to subside immediately. My only job was not what was done to me or how but to be love as it always was, as it was when I continually offered to put the person’s happiness before my desire to be in relationship. So I took a risk, not really wanting to communicate; I took a risk and communicated by phone, email, and Skype and let the person know that I begrudge nothing, resent not. My total goal is to be love and if you’re happy and healthy away from me, without me, and apart from me then that’s great. It makes me happy that this person finally found that wherever or with whomever it was. It’s good to communicate such things, better yet to live them.