From a young age romance movies instill us with the belief that love is designed to be eternal. The idealistic concept that everybody is destined for someone, that everybody has a soul mate. There's this immediate societal pressure to not be alone, because the worst thing you could be when you grow up is alone. Then we do grow up and we fall in love for the first time. When we do, we bring along vast amounts of our unrealistic expectations. We place the pieces of our identity at the feet of another person, a person who is equally as perplexed about life as we are, and we hope they will love us forever. However, forever is a long time..
We want them to love us completely while they are still learning to love themselves. We expect that they will chose us over their own growth. That when they finally forge their own path we will be invited along for the hike. When they fail to do this we feel angry, hurt and place blame because after all, love is supposed to be forever right? We cling to this concept so tightly we suffocate the people we claim to love, simply because we're afraid of what will happen if we let go. Youth have this twisted perspective of time; that to lose someone is to lose them forever. Maybe what we really need out of the relationships from our youth is for them to show us new perspectives about the way we love, and the way we let go.
People come and go from our lives, that's the way of life, but to believe that someone is gone from our lives "forever" whilst they still walk the earth is a narrow minded way of thinking. Life is equally as long as it is short and nobody knows what the future may hold, paths twist and turn and we often can't predict their final destination until we arrive. We must learn to believe that everything happens for a reason, even if we can't currently see what that reason is. To have faith that things will work out the way they're designed to, if they're meant to.
Shift our perspectives to allow for more "imperfect" endings. To accept that someone can walk into our lives, give us happiness, teach us how to love ourselves a little more than we did before, just to turn and walk right out again. To learn to meet a goodbye with gratitude for what we have gained, rather than anger for what we weren't given. If we are able to appreciate every moment as a forever then when forever really does show up we're gifted more than we ever expected.
Maybe they aren’t designed to stay forever. Maybe they can’t. Maybe they shouldn’t.
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