LOVING ON BORROWED TIME

I’ve recently noticed... all my suffering has been caused by my attachment to things that are borrowed.

I have looked and looked and it also appears that this is definitely a problem because… try as I might, I can’t find anything that isn’t borrowed.

My experience of being alive, being here and being a person is a continual changing realm of borrowed states that I always have to hand over. Today and this minute I am no longer in the body or mind I borrowed 5 seconds ago from whomever she was in the past.

My possessions are borrowed. Eventually they will be handed over, destroyed or atrophised back into the earth on my physical demise at the very latest. My body... borrowed, handed back over at a given time or date that I have no say over.

My family – borrowed

My loved ones – borrowed

My friends – borrowed.

My pets – borrowed.

My current financial, career or relationship status – subject to change at any moment.

My gains – shifting like sand.

My losses – waning in and out of definition.

My health – temporary, unpredictable and destined to one day fail.

The view from my window - stolen to my eyes for a fleeting moment.

My education and knowledge – momentary and unreliable.

My opinions – as secure as melting ice

My moods – like clouds both at once obscuring and revealing the moon

The cup of tea I’m drinking now – rapidly evaporating.

This moment - borrowed.

In fact, is there anything we can as humans ever really call ‘mine’?

We don’t get to keep a damn thing and we don’t get out of here alive... fact!  

Pain most probably comes from knowing this deep down and trying to hold onto a moment that will shift soon. 

Most of the Art-forms that we love and enjoy are, in some respect a beautiful attempt to catch an ethereal and non-negotiable moment of time before it passes and pin it down in some form of expression. And even all those expressions are... you got it!... borrowed

The New Commitments

Like many, I had in the past promised love forever to partners who were only borrowed. Only for 3 years, 7 years, 10 months... how are we to know?

In relationship, the futile attempts to hold others to a moment that wants to shift and change naturally will cause suffering, like a damn blocking a river that wants to wash clean. We can try and try, but eventually, the river will build up enough pressure to burst the damn down. The inevitable tides will turn towards…experiencing more love whether it’s together or apart.

Perhaps this is why, in the lighthouse, it is so hard to promise forever to anyone or anything. You can only promise a series of ‘Now’s’ which for all I know, could turn into forever, or just last the week.

I will never again know and experience you again as I know you today

I will never hear your voice again as I hear it now.

I will never enjoy your touch again as I do in this moment.

I will never again see the sun in the same way as today

I will never again see this tree as it is now in this moment... and there... it’s gone again.

I cannot presume it will continue or I will get to keep it as mine. 

It sounds pretty futile and hopeless doesn’t it?  Yet, strangely enough, it is this very awareness that my experience of you is only borrowed which makes me for the first time be in a position where I can promise something of value and worth to someone I love. In fact, I can ACTUALLY love you properly! and I can promise to lovingly, compassionately and kindly experience you, moment by moment by moment by…

I promise not to attach to who I thought you were yesterday and who I think you should or could be tomorrow. I promise that even in my lack of at times being able to make a promise that I will be PRESENT with you, no matter what.

We could simply call it… not taking those we love for granted.

Or as Benjamin Smythe puts it: 

Loving an animal bound to natural decay is an act of courageous insanity. 

This new experience of love is so refreshingly alive and delightful and is ironically more secure and enduring than the old paradigm of commitment that once said by an act of sheer force or obligation... “I WILL love you, honour, stay with you... forever and ever... and erm... ever... and... oh I’m exhausted even saying it now! “

The awareness of impermanence that creates vast room and sacred space for love to dance wildly, freely and without inhibition.

I love you so truly and deeply that  I wouldn't want any less for you than the sheer freedom and ecstasy of enjoying all these borrowed moments without my mental handcuffs of expectation on you.

Just a thought!

- - - - - - - 

ETERNAL LOVE

My experience of Love seems to be the only thing I don’t have to hand back. It arises in me as something that I can take with me wherever and whenever I go and it doesn’t change. Feelings change, love does not, and if it does… well, it wasn’t love.

And let’s be clear, I don’t have to be with you to love you either.

 As Byron Katie once said:

“I can love you completely, and you have nothing to do with it. There's nothing you can do to keep me from the intimacy that I experience with you”

I can’t be sure of course…Love may finally be borrowed too once the galaxy has exploded and all that remains of ‘me’ is ashes and universal collective memory…but I just don’t know!

Either way... I’d like to keep the idea and live out these moments through the eternal priority which beats in an ever-growing heart and sings …

” I will always love you,

That I do know”