Doing Love
Recently I have noticed that my self-talk consists of a lot of “you can do this” statements, those and “C’mon. Just a little more.” I am convincing myself that this thing that I am doing, whether it is lifting a little more weight in the gym, or doing just a couple more reps, or squats, or lunges (ohmigodIhatesquatsandlunges) or taking one more whack at the Presentation That Will Not Die is something I can do. Then I get there, and feel proud, for five minutes until I have to self-talk again. I have to self-talk a lot. I have a lot of goals.
It is not that I am afraid of doing things. It is that I think I can do them better than I have been. Courage is the daily challenge to do it just a little bit better, just a little bit more, just a little. But why do I have to have courage, again? Oh right, because I am afraid that it is not enough. That i am not enough. And so the cycle repeats.
Especially when it comes to Love
Some days, I am just all out of Brave. On those days, I try anyway, but sometimes I just can’t get there. I used to white knuckle through to get to every goal I thought I wanted. But then there was the next “goal,” and I never seemed to quite get that the goals I reached were not the point of doing them. “Making” something happen was not the point. Getting there was the point.
The point is that the little bit IS the goal. To move forward just a little bit helps me find my badass, and helps me understand that brave means being vulnerable. It means walking towards the things and people and relationships I thought would never be for me because I was too broken, or sure that they would abandon me, or ultimately just not deserving enough.
Especially when it comes to Love
But here is the thing, it isn’t about other people. It isn’t about loving someone else a little bit more. It is about loving myself a just little bit more, every day, and falling back in love with the broken places, every day.
Love is not about getting better so someone else can love me better. It is about getting better so I can love other people better. So I can do the verb — “to Love” — better.
At the end of it all, my life partner is myself
Love is not something we find as a tangible thing. Love is an action and we don’t need anyone else to confirm or deny its existence. I don’t need to seek out the noun — LOVE — as if if finding it is a treasure hunt where the doubloon is in another person. So many people think that they can find love if they just search a little bit more for the right person and never see that the right person is staring at them in the mirror.
I don’t need you to be in love with. I just need me.
