What you waiting for?

We ain't getting no younger...

A journal entry from RA YUKAWA.

Soulmates.

5 years later. And another 5 years later. 12 years later. And another 12 years later. “And now, finally, I have you in my arms.” They’ve been inseparable since — 35 years in (each other’s arms).

Or not.

When Harry Met Sally, the Before trilogy, The Best Man film series (and miniseries)…

I’ve never thought of that as something that I wanted. I would watch my favourite movie of all time (since my teenage years), Brown Sugar, and think, all those damn-near-20 years as friends and they finally get together when they’re pushing 30? Nah. Couldn’t be me. If we want each other that strongly, we’re together the first time, first thing first, and it’s that simple. Because if we’re meant to be, nothing should keep us from being together — not kids, not a marriage, not fear of losing one another, nothing. If we’re meant to be together, it’ll be divine timing, as in, if it’s not now, then it could never be. “Ain’t no such thing as wrong time, it’s just the wrong person, that’s it.”

But that hard-out perspective completely contradicted the storyline of my “favourite movie of all time.” And it was my favourite because of the storyline, amongst other reasons, so what was I really saying?

That fortitude of love was actually something that I wanted more than anything and it scared me. I was afraid to inevitably lose myself in that longing for more. To find myself finding myself through a friendship, in such an irrevocably intense and undeniably romantic manner, that I could never detach my feelings from it and instead, would just end up living in this benumbing pain of watching my wife be someone else’s wife, while I marry a woman that I love but I’m not in love with because “not everybody can marry their one true love.”

That’s what I was really thinking and feeling.

I wanted it, I just didn’t think that I could handle it.

And then, life does that thing it does where it kind of like happens, you know? And it’s bizarre, but time passes along with it — like, why would time do that? And you’re just going through, holding onto ideas and beliefs from your childhood — from the time before the time that’s constantly whooshing towards you — because it’s the only thing that seems to keep you stable in the chaos of change. Then, you hit one of those Saturn Return eras and it’s like you’re in the eye of that time warp thing that we’re talking about — we’ll just call it “the storm”. Winds pick up and you go, “Man, I swear this year is going by fast” and, “They’re how old now?! Oh nooo!” You lose your grip on time, on space, on matter, and more importantly, you lose your grip on you.

You just do.

Your old thought patterns, whole memories, most of those ideas and beliefs you were clinging to from your childhood (your safety blanket). Just whoosh…

After the storm, those things are replaced with some new ones — like a home being rebuilt, you become someone new. Someone who’s looked death in the face and lived to tell the story.

What you see for your life, what you feel that you need, what (or how) you can endure in order to carry on living, it changes. You change.

If you continue to let go.

Did you listen to those long strokes of wisdom embedded within the whispers of the wind when it roared against the core of your soul, instead of just feeling the branch of the brush strike you to tears? Did you taste the thin wisp of an imaginary line, like clouds parting the amniotic sea of night and day, mirroring life and death across the multitude of your existences, or was it just blood in your mouth? Did you smell iron, or was it heavy metal molecules finely slicing the very expensive fabric of your reality to thin air so that you can breathe?

Tell me— No, tell yourself, did you let go enough to continue to, or do you feel that you were just forced to pretend to?

Time hasn’t washed me up on the shores of where I am now. I’d like to believe that I became a captain of those winds, a pirate nihilistically stealing gems of verifiable truth as I dove head-on into its ocular heart — fishing for evidence that love, above all else, is worthwhile, worth surrendering to the storm of time for.

Due to that quest, I think I’ve built a sturdy enough relationship with the seasons of time, to be here, damn-near-20 years after seeing Brown Sugar as a kid, tipping over 30 years old, saying, I can wait.

I can wait for whomever it is that I’m destined to be with, and I’ll be perfectly fine if it’s just me — the next version of myself. Waiting is still living, still loving, still hurting, still healing, still becoming, and sometimes, being still. I can do that because what I want more than anything, now, is to wait, to take my time, to savour experiences, to reflect, to see the mistakes that I’ve made, to see things that I never knew existed, to hear my heart and follow it, to be the slow burn that I am. I want that. That’s “goals”.

I can still do all of that waiting while in a relationship — in fact, this “waiting” is an integral part of healthy love. I can wait in celibacy. I can wait in a friendship. I can wait in abstinence. I can wait and not be blue in the face; I can wait and still breathe. Waiting just means allowing life to do that thing that it does where it kind of like happens— You know. It’s just that instead of swimming against the direction that the whirlwind of time spins, you flow with it — watching, listening, tasting, and smelling as all of your “defense-mechanised” nostalgia floats around you like a hula hoop, looping down the drain of rebirth. You understand?

Time is always divine.

So, I’ve come to realise, or rather, accept, that the right person, or people, will always come at the right time (sometimes, intermittently, in a series of multiple right times). It just may seem as if it’s the wrong time(s) or the wrong person because it’s not what you’ve envisioned, or there are elements keeping you from being together. But it’s not about being together, as illustrated in Past Lives, or what you’ve envisioned (or compiled in a list of checkboxes), it’s simply about the knowing of that particular love, in your bones, in their eyes. And yes, “when you know, you know,” because in fact, I have reason to believe that they’ve always been there, with you, and you with them. Your connection through love is beyond your presence within this continuum of life, you just happen to be bestowed with it here. (Damn, the privilege.)

Love is always.

So, can you wait?

You get your life back when you pass spirit the responsibility to orchestrate the love you seek, rather than trying to manipulate it with your own energy. Love is for spirit to create, not for humans to control. Life becomes joyous again when you clearly pray and delegate the task of relationship to your ancestors. You were never meant to be a facilitator for love, but a devotee of it instead. Leave love to spirit and keep your humanness. (Iya Ehime Ora)

---

Meditate on the parts that resound throughout your core. Honour all else where it stands. Thank you for reading.