I can’t help but think it is what we all want. Everyone I pass on the sidewalk or in the parking lot at COSTCO wants it. We all want to love and be loved. It is a natural force stirring inside and between us all. For the the most part we resist it or attempt to ignore it.
I think of all the people I’ve sat next to on an airplane. Not the overweight ones who forced themselves into my narrow seat. Rather I think of all those from whom I felt the warmth of their close presence. I remember the light chatter as we talked, as we exchanged small tidbits of our lives.
For the duration of the flight, we allowed ourselves to experience a small pForced into closeness, we wanted to be allowed to drop our external guard and genuinely love one another, for just a little while. It would only be for the duration of the flight we knew. But we got a small taste of what we really wanted.
Once, and regrettably only once, we went beyond when I sat next to someone in the airport while we were waiting for a flight. We actually extended that brief encounter and became friends for a longer while. We were never lovers in the common sense. But we allowed ourselves to extend and savor what should have been by design only a brief chance encounter, sitting next to one another under the aura of flying. We dared to pursue a little bit more of what we really wanted.
What about all those other people with whom I rubbed shoulders during a concert or discussed what we thought of a painting in a museum. Every one a small gesture of what we wanted, to see and be seen, to love and be loved. My life is full of the memory of these small gestures of want. I was part of an exchange of gestures of acknowledgement and recognition how I and someone else is profoundly lovable.
Only our cultural constraints kept us rom plunging into an outpouring of affirmation of what we see. How many missed opportunities I had to exchange how we were each infinity beautiful and lovable. My life is littered with situations of love that was so easy to feel but equally restrained from expression except in subtle and small ways.
We all are meant to be lovers and be loved. It is what we want. We want to share one another’s burdens and be thrilled in one another’s joy. Yet we resist. Too often we briefly reveal who we really are then rapidly retreat into a place of hiding and seclusion. If I have any regrets of my life they are all about the times I said “No.”
I hope I can change that, and honor what I really want. I want to add time to the brief encounters. I want to ignore cultural constraints. I want to be more of a fountain of loving kindness and a reservoir of the same.