There is one feeling in the world that we all want in life and yet it is the one thing that we unknowingly fear the most: love. The phrase, “to fall in love”, carries both the terror and the bliss that happens when you meet someone who softens your heart and strengthens your soul. Isn’t that exactly what we truly want to feel when we fall in love with someone? That other soul and human being who is just as frightened yet courageous enough to hold on to something worth living and dying together for? My eyes well up as I write this because a very special human being came into my life and has shared with me, the most magnificent and sacred feeling that we humans are so lucky to experience. To experience love with another human being is absolutely breathtaking and marvelous. It is life elevated and is a dwelling place of true, heavenly felicity.
When I think about the journey I’ve made to discover my significance in the world, my divine purpose, and the love I needed to grow in order to create the life I wanted, I realize that all it took was a constant awareness of all that was happening around me and a choice to always choose that which was greater in love than in fear. As you move through your one human life, you are given gifts of love that are all around you. We are born into a world that already teaches us how to love and be present in the breaking and growing of ourselves as lovely human beings.
Nature teaches us this through the seasons. We cannot know or experience the beauty and blossoming of life felt in the spring without winter. We cannot know presence without knowing absence. We cannot know courage without knowing fear. And with every season, you see just how resilient nature is in its love to show you how tender and forgiving love can really be. We have to learn to open our eyes and heart and choose to feel the love that is all around us. If you want love, you truly must be love, no matter how many winters you may go through. Love could never be terrible or unkind, that is the role of fear. Love is always giving even in your darkest moments. I know this because I was close to death once.
In the darkest hour of my life, I spoke to death so calmly and begged to understand my role in this world. I cried for hours to the point where tears no longer fell. I hadn’t eaten a real meal in weeks and survived off a slice of bread a day as my punishment for not being good enough. And when choosing life seemed so far away, the next morning I woke up and heard a faint voice fill my heart. It whispered to me lovingly, “Noemi, you exist for a reason. I am sorry you feel that life isn’t beautiful, but your ability to feel this intensely is why you must live. Live so that you can be a light and loving source of strength to others when they read or listen to your soul speak in words.” It was in that moment that I realized, love was the only choice I needed to make. Since then, I have devoted every waking moment that I get to choose a life that grows my love and fills others with it. It hasn’t been easy and I’ve had my heart broken plenty of times, but the truth is, the pain that passes through you is the moment you seize to give yourself the tender love that you deserve. You give yourself this love by maintaining your presence in the pain, awareness of your unhappiness, and you communicate with yourself and your partner what you would like to do differently and how you would like to grow through it.
Part of the problem of why we fear love so much is because we spend so much time equating love to being able to fulfill the ego’s needs. We don’t spend the time to truly listen and act in a loving way to ourselves and our partner. We desire the closeness and loyalty of intimacy that love brings, but choose instant gratifications that soothe our minor aches. We don’t understand that love isn’t a stagnant thing.
Love is a constant and growing force that requires full awareness of the self and the other. It requires sincere, hard work to grow and move towards a love so heavenly. It is equal parts oxygen and magic. It keeps our eyes dilated and throats laughing and dreams birthed and hearts alive. It gifts us wonder and energy and helps us thrive. It is truly the great motivator in life.
When we begin to love ourselves and can accept that sharing our vulnerabilities with each other is not a frightening task, we begin to allow love to enter in our home. Many people may enter and come and go, but only few will stay and create a home with you. Choose love and choose it always. And when you are lucky enough to meet someone who is brave in their weakness and yet steadfast in their choice to love and hold onto you as you both walk to the edges of the earth and fall together for a love so utterly captivating that even time and space tremble, you choose. You choose love over fear, always. You choose because even if you fear being hurt or shattered into pieces, you choose because growth requires breaking out of our old selves and routines to become truly alive as a human being for love.
I hope that you who are reading this, may go on and begin to create your place of felicity, wonder, and solace with yourself and whether or not you are ready to share that with another human who may just be courageous enough to build something with you, take it, choose it. Grow for love and all of its intoxicating beauty.
Always to the stars,
Noemi
soulcentric. 