Last night, for instance, Cary Tennis penned a beautiful response to a reader who was concerned that she might have fallen out of love with her husband. Her letter conveyed her hurt and fear more than anything else (I believe unintentionally), and in his usually brilliant way CT latched on to that when delicately responding to her question. (He rarely, if ever, answers the question outright. You'd swear he is a psychologist!) Here's what he said:
Dear Out of Love,
We are not inexhaustible, you know. We have limits. We will shut down when we reach those limits. Parts of us will go to sleep. Perhaps your love for this man is not dead. Perhaps it has just gone to sleep.
Perhaps you have simply overdone it; you have pushed yourself too hard, you have given of yourself and given of yourself and finally have run out of self.
That is one explanation. The other is this: "Since the beginning," you say, "I've been prepared for him to leave me as soon as he figures out just what a bum deal he got."
How awful it must be to live with that fear. No wonder you are exhausting yourself. No wonder you no longer feel deep, trusting love. How can you love someone completely if you think he's going to leave you the minute he discovers your shortcomings? How can you love someone completely if you don't trust him? [emphasis added]
And why don't you trust him? You don't trust him because you don't trust yourself. You don't love him because you don't love yourself. [emphasis added]
The logic of it is this: If you don't believe you're worthy of love, then you can't believe that anyone will truly love you, and so it's dangerous for you to love that person because he will leave you.
So even though you say he loves you unconditionally, you don't really believe it. Deep down, you're scared that the minute he really sees you for who you are, he'll leave. So you can't love him. In fact, in a way you have come to hate him, as you hate yourself, your own shortcomings, your own failure to love completely. [emphasis added]
So it all comes back to you. You've got to love yourself first. You've got to take a break from this agonizing and backbreaking struggle to prove yourself worthy.
You are worthy. You have to know that. Maybe you should go look yourself in the mirror and tell yourself you are worthy. I know that this is the worst cliché of the self-help culture. I know that it sounds ridiculous and is easy to make fun of. Yet I also know that people like you and me torment ourselves until we fall apart. We turn our merciless gaze on ourselves, a gaze under which we wither, and then we turn it on others and they also wither in our gaze. After we do that, what's left? We've scorched the landscape and then we are surprised: Where did all the love go? What have we done?
Somehow we have to find our gaze of nurturing love and turn this on ourselves and others. Where does this gaze of nurturing love come from?
Again and again, I ask myself this. My first response is, Hell if I know. And yet as I keep going it starts to come: We have this thing. We have had it since birth. We have had some kernel of self-love since birth. We have the instinct for survival. We have an instinct for delight, for self-preservation, for pleasure, for breath. We do have this. We can place our hands on our own bodies and luxuriate in who we are, in our own flesh, our own warmth, our own strength. What is love without pleasure? What is pleasure if not a kind of love?
Which brings us to this: Where is the pleasure in your love with this man? It's been all about survival, hasn't it?
Maybe pleasure is your route back to love. Find pleasure in yourself. Love yourself. Trust yourself. If you love yourself, then you are worthy of love. If you are worthy of love, then you can believe him when he says he loves you. You can trust him. If you can trust him, you can let yourself love him again.
I think he's right, and I believe Laura Munson would agree: we cannot love others until we've learned to love ourselves. (Ah, that I could convince He Who Is In Personal Crisis of that fact!) Because it takes forgiveness, humility, gentleness and grace to respond to others; we can't know the power of or need for those things until we've been willing to offer them to ourselves. Likewise, in order to learn to love ourselves, we must learn to be appreciative of the small blessings we receive. If we only focus on the big picture we miss how the tapestries of our lives are woven. We miss the beauty and, sadly, drown in the cynicism of unmet expectations. That's the gratitude part of this equation.
Here's what India Arie has to say about those "Little Things" (see the gorgeous video here):
Been around the whole world, still ain't seen
Nothin' like my neighborhood
And of all the fancy satin and silk
My white cotton feels so good
Searched high and low for a place
Where I can lay my burdens down
Ain't nothin' in the whole wide world
Like the peace that I have found
It's the little things
And the joy they bring
It's the little things
And joy they bring
As simple as a phone call just to make it known
That you're gonna be a little late
Pure as a kiss on a cheek and a word
That everything will be okay
Call in the mornin' from my little sister
Singin' to me, "Happy Birthday"
In the quest for fortune and fame
Don't forget about the simple things
It's the little things
And the joy they bring, yeah
It's the little things
And joy
Give me some good food, give me cute shoes
Give me some piece of mind
Bring me some sunshine, bring me some blue sky
Runnin' 'round in circles, lost my focus
Lost sight of my goal
I do this for the love of music
Not for the glitter and gold
Got everything that I pray for
Even a little more
When I ask to learn humility
This is what I was told
It's the little things
And the joy they bring, it's the little things
It's the little things
Give me my guitar, give me a bright star
Give me some good news, give me some cute shoes
Give me Atlanta, give me Savannah
give me my peace of mind
Give me some Stevie, give me some Donny
Give me my daddy, give me my mommy
Pour me some sweet tea, spoonful of honey
I don't need no Hollywood
I hope these thoughts resonate with you this weekend.
-Me