Love is Here

Love all, trust a few"...(William Shakespeare). In my dreams last night...the theme was about how ultimately our journey is ours alone and in that aloneness we can ultimately discover love. I felt very alone during my childhood and had a difficult time internalizing a sense of security and of feeling loved. According to Erickson's stages of psychological development, children develop a sense of trust versus mistrust during the first 18 months of life. The idea is that if trust is not firmly established, the individual struggles with issues of trust until they can master that lesson. Ideally, once individuals master trust, they can move on to other levels of development. Often many people struggle with issues of trust regardless of how secure and loving a family may have been. The lesson for all of us is to internalize a sense of love and trust. People often fear being alone because they will have to face their deep seated feelings of aloneness and insecurities. In fact, people will often cling to unhealthy relationships, excessive television, internet, drugs and alcohol or other distractions, to keep from feeling and facing aloneness. When you can internalize a firm sense of identity and security in being alone, love of self and others can then blossom. I am amazed at how many people cannot even spend any time alone, even to attend a movie or eat a meal at a restaurant. Although I have always been able to do things alone...my lesson was to establish a deep sense of security. Again, even with the most supportive families, everyone has to face aloneness at some point in their lives, otherwise they are perpetually running in circles trying to avoid feeling alone. It is in truly being alone, one can really get to know yourself profoundly. When you are alone, everything that you refuse to accept or acknowledge begins to surface. In being alone, everything that you have disowned begins to become illuminated. We begin to truly know ourselves, to see ourselves more clearly and to see the genuine. It is something that has to be experienced. I never feel alone when I am by myself. In being alone, I have also internalized a deep sense of trust in myself and life. I may still be hurt by others, but I honor my journey of feeling and in taking numerous chances in the name of love. Love is now here, with me always. I am not looking for it outwardly, I am emanating it in everything that I am. I do not curse my choices or my journey....my path from birth to this very point in my life has been a journey of ups and downs and it makes me who I am today. I happen to love who I am today, so how can I regret a single thing that has ever happened in my life. So embrace who you are completely but don't forget to forgive yourself along the way. It's difficult if not impossible to embrace love, if you are hiding behind self sabotage and self defeating behaviors. “This is the true measure of love: When we believe that we alone can love, that no one could ever have loved so before us, and that no one will ever love in the same way after us”....(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe).