WATERS.
Love is easy and people are difficult. The complexity of human nature will sabotage our own happiness and restrict the flow of love in our lives, to what extent love is given and received. To love is to be vulnerable, which can mean being bare, breaking down the walls we’ve built over the years to protect our hearts. Life is a body of water holding on to nothing, reaching out to touch everything, flowing, yet sometimes crashing. Life, a body of water that can take the shape of anything turns to take the shape of love when we flow into someone’s life who we care about. We turn to consume others in our waters or dry up and cause drought in the lives of others. Finding a balance between drought and overflow, staying afloat becomes a difficult task in a world where people generally respond more to rejection than they do to love.
The Overflow
The psychology of people responding to rejection more than they do to love is proven when the sea meets the land. In every encounter, the shore holds on to the wave even though he keeps slipping away from her. The wave comes back to the shore because he knows she will always find a way to receive him. She receives him because she has grown so accustomed to this situation, the road out begins to take the form of blurry lines that can only be seen under magnifying lenses. Within each of us lies the power to give in abundance to people who we think we need in our lives; we give all that we are because even in the most difficult of situations we believe that if only the person we care about could open their eyes and see how much we care, they would maybe return the same kind of love we give them. The sad truth is, the actions of others is not a reflection of what you do or who you are but a reflection of who they are, and no matter how much you try to fix things –to teleport back in time when you could feel all the emotions from the time you were the one consumed by their waters– the reality of now reveals who is actually a giver or a taker.
When you begin to give more to prove to that person that you are a safe space, when you are the only one purchasing glasses so that your worth is seen through its lenses, you need to take a step back because people respond more to your absence than they do to your presence. Holding on to memories will cost you the overflow you cannot afford. No matter how consumed you are in their waters, drowning to prove your presence should never be an option.
Drought
When we become so used to being at the receiving end, we overlook the need to give. On the flip side, when we give without receiving, we dry up. Even though it might take us a long time to realize it, there comes a day when even the kindest of people hold back, not because they actually want to but because life subsequently teaches them to hold their cards to their chest if they truly desire to win in the end. Come to think of it, why must there be a winner when it comes to who loves more? Is it because love is a game and the person who gives more ends up at the losing end? Why must we cause drought to invite the rain? If we are all bodies of water, then we should all flow equally. It is because that which is easily given is subconsciously deemed of less value. Hold back your rain! The more drought the absence of your waters causes, the more your waters are sought after.
Afloat
The pursuit of any kind of love that isn’t self-love doesn’t in any way mean that you love yourself any less. No matter how whole of a person we are as individuals, the need to have someone, something to come home to, never goes away, or at least that’s what I know. Even the strongest of individuals need a safe space to vent and to be truly themselves. The question then arises, how do you give yourself to someone who is willing to receive you? How do you stay afloat in your waters and theirs also? Some would say, “you don’t try, because love finds you at your worst.” Others would say, “if it’s meant to be, it evolves into exactly what it should be.” The truth is love isn’t by chance and though it is a gamble of the heart, you either win or lose. It takes two people who are willing to try on a daily basis; two conscious people willing to make it work.
Love is indeed easy, and people are difficult. People are afraid to give themselves freely and accept that which is given them in the form of kindness. This is because, in the back of our minds, we ask ourselves, “is there a price to pay for all this love?” People are complicated because they build up hopes in their minds even when they are drowning; they hope that they will eventually be pulled out into the lives of the ones they feel so deeply for.
Love is easy, and people are difficult. Love wants to be expressed because, in all actuality, love is tangible. It can be felt, tasted on the tongues of the ones we share it with, heard in the words that are spoken through the mouth of another. But love can also be confusing, because how do you pour yourself in a glass to be drunk by someone who may or may not appreciate your essence? Truth is, life itself is a gamble and so is love, so we must love ourselves enough to leave droughty lands and value ourselves enough to never overflow.
Authored by Beulah Nimene
Featured Picture by Unsplash
