Untying the Knot: Committing to relationship & learning to love yourself
(Excerpt from Shook Free.)
Hours passed like minutes that morning in Manitou Springs, Colorado as I had a conversation with someone I was not certain existed. Calling me Bartholomew, he was crying because they did not love themselves. It brought me back to Rome, recalling years earlier standing in the Pope’s Cathedral under Le Gros’s 14-foot statue forever holding its flayed face. In the shadow of this colossus, I had naively vowed to lose myself.
Now the afternoon, penniless, homeless, alone and still in Colorado, the realization set in: I had succeeded. Never would I find out if this stranger existed, but the words would stay. Without truly understanding why he was crying, I naively vowed to love myself.
Cleaning up in the following weeks, it was unclear if the mess was my own or the world was to blame. Neither felt quite right. What thirty-something Harvard grad walks around blaming his parents, friends, and ex-lovers? Yet, how could I really have made this all myself? Didn’t they screw me up? Didn’t they give me the triggers and trauma and all the other uncomfortable feelings inside which I was supposed to spend my life unpacking? Wasn’t relationship the root of my discomfort? Ironically, it was surrendering to relationship itself that brought me the grace to see a bit of how it all strings together
The Latin roots of relate have a sense of bringing or carrying back. It is relationships that bring us back to ourselves and help us find love. We open our experience, lay down our self-interest and understand the positions of others. We learn to see life as a string of uniquely tied knots. As the string both composes and connects, the knots are truly only in relationship to themselves. If we are each a knot wanting to untie, it is only then by passing through others that we can succeed.
When my wife proposed to me for the third time, I could no longer ignore the need for a committed relationship. It was clear we would either figure a way to stay together, or we would split. Splitting meant more time alone, loss of self, and grasping for love in the dark. There had been enough of that in Colorado. It was time for light. Our agreement was simple: We loved each other, without condition. And in this love it was no matter what the other was going through. We would agree to be there at the end of anything. We would stay. We would not judge. We would allow. We would help only if allowed. We would never stop caring. This was our life, in relationship.
This was Love, simple.
What began in the security of our relationship continued to the individuals and relationships causing the most pain. These took the most attention. They also facilitated the most growth.
In combining discomfort and awareness, we are blessed with endless opportunities to grow, experiment with new responses and develop the ability to act. We learn to create skillful, moment-specific actions instead of reacting out habitual reactions. Ignoring the overwhelming role of relationship in life, uncomfortable situations continue to arise. Seeing the string, we are carried back to ourselves.
Through relationship we learn the effect of our actions. The great big interconnected self is always operating this way — as one hand can massage the other, a hand cannot massage itself. It is only through relationship that each can come to know about itself. And is it not the most common of our relationships — the everyday lovers, coworkers and friends — that typically need the most massaging? In the fullness of time, here is where we find the most healing, as we become free to explore life in a safe space. Without judgment, the mind’s stories can settle. These stories create the perspectives which define our lives. Free of them, we begin to see more of the way things are and less of how they appear to be.
With loving relationships, we transcend the habitual mental meandering through life and find love for other and love for self is the same. This is why he was crying. Without understanding our deep connection to others, we go through life in tremendous pain. Accepting the role of relationship, we shed fear, ignorance and loneliness and grow intention, understanding and connection. This is healing.
It begins with awareness. And of what else is there to become aware but the vast interconnected string on which we are all knots? Just as so, we ourselves are not made of something other, but only a knotted string in relationship with itself. May we all learn to see the other knots as ourselves, untying each other as we learn to love.
