Dear Hearts,
Welcome back to the journey.
Dear Hearts, welcome back to our bonfire by the beach. The cool air and faint scent of jasmine from distant groves mingle with the salt of the sea, while the flames crackle softly, warming our bare knees as we sit together and begin to talk about our lives lately. You and I, we’ve come so far, haven’t we? We’ve weathered so much. How did the younger versions of ourselves get through it all? Looking back, wasn’t that an awful lot for us to carry? Physically, spiritually, emotionally, how did we endure long enough to arrive where we are today? Let us talk about it.
“I don’t know where this strength comes from, but I know it’s from a place as old as the earth and the stars,” you tell me.
I nod, feeling the truth of your words settle within me as I take a sip of my warm coffee. “But do you ever wonder what might have happened if you hadn’t found it?” I ask. I shift, resting my head in your lap, while you lean back and look up at the vastness of the night sky.
“I don’t think I’ve ever given myself the time to ask that,” you say. “I just knew that my circumstances would not define my story.”
I sit up to face you, and in your eyes, I see the same stars that glow in my own. I hug you because you need to be hugged. Because you need to be seen. Two soldiers on a battlefield, finding one another through the clearing smoke. I hug you as I, too, once needed to be hugged, because I know what it is to find strength through pain, to carry on without knowing how, or where the strength to do so comes from.
You see, dear hearts, perhaps we are all born of the stars, children of the cosmos, of the great unknown, or of the divine energy that moves through us all. Whatever name we give it, I believe there is something that connects us to one another, to those who came before us, and to something far greater than our individual lives. We are all extensions of the same source, each carrying within us a doorway to the infinite.
And perhaps where we begin to flounder is when we search for this power everywhere but within ourselves. In the hearts of those who cannot love us as we wish to be loved. In experiences that take more from us than they give. In the approval of others, as though their acceptance might finally make us worthy of the lives we wish to lead. We begin to forget that what we seek so desperately in the world may have been within us all along. To me, our greatest strength lies in recognising our connection to the universe. I imagine this connection as a companion, one that walks beside us through every circumstance, steadfast and boundless in its capacity to love us. But to recognise this presence, we must first learn to see ourselves. Do we see ourselves as beautiful? Kind? Giving? Or have we come to believe that we are unworthy, ordinary, undeserving?
And what happens when we begin to believe these things about ourselves? We look at our lives through a lens that diminishes us. We mistake our circumstances for our worth, our disappointments for our failures, and the love we have not received for the love we do not deserve. Slowly, we lose sight of who we are. Yet our strength was never something we had to acquire. It was there when we took our first breath, and it has accompanied us through every circumstance since. Perhaps what we call finding ourselves is simply learning to recognise what has been there all along. The courage to dream, to pursue happiness, to experience a love that feels true, perhaps these things begin with the way we see ourselves. Perhaps the moment we recognise that, despite all our hardships, we remain deserving of the very things we once dreamed for ourselves, is the moment we begin to find our way home.
You look at me now, and I see you more clearly as the flames illuminate your features. Then, the next words to pass your lips seem to reverberate somewhere deep within me, as though I have known them long before this moment. They ripple between us, carried by the air heavy with the scent of jasmine and the sound of waves.
Without you, I am neither smaller nor greater, neither a coward nor a warrior, neither truthful nor deceitful, neither more powerful nor more inconsequential. Without you, I am nothing…
I hear the words echoing because we are both speaking them in unison. Like a memory returning from a distant past. Like the night’s song to the golden day. And suddenly, I understand.
All this time, I thought I was speaking to you. I thought I was offering you the comfort I once needed, the understanding I had spent so long searching for, the reassurance that whatever life had taken from you, it could never take away your worth. But perhaps I have been speaking to myself, too. Perhaps the person I have been trying to comfort is the very person who has accompanied me through every circumstance. The one who has endured every heartbreak, every disappointment, every moment of uncertainty. The one I have sometimes forgotten to see, even as I have asked them to find the strength to carry on. Perhaps this is the conversation we have been waiting to have all along.
Because you and I, dear heart, are but one and the same. And I will love you forever.
love always,
Avastavé by Dmitri Ruwan
Listen to the audio narration of this article here.
