Like a Ripple on a Pond

​Today I’d like to come back to a topic I wrote about a few years ago.

How about your New Year’s resolutions? Are you someone who favours ambitions or have you given up on making some purpose on life? Did we even learn from a year like 2021, a year we were asked to sail under a foreign flag that is called Covid-19?

I think the pandemic situation we’re living in at the moment did show us, with forceful clarity once in a while, how helpful it can be to remind ourselves on the meaning of life. In times with most of us in lockdown circumstances made us realise how essential love, friendship, physical contacts, and sexuality are. If those things all of a sudden go amiss, or we maybe have to admit that they were already non- existent before, we are in real trouble.

​Why do we need a meaning of life? Evidently, human beings are very much in need of meaning. Why is that? The complex of meaning, and this is my answer to the why, always comes along with a massive push of energy that let us feel incredibly alive and powerful. This astonishing phenomenon is, of course, most experienceable when we have love. When we truly love or feel we are being loved by others. When we found our meaning, when there is love to emphasise this again, anything we do makes sense. Love is everything.

Let’s look at this a bit closer. What if there is no love, what if you do not feel loved? Or, what if the person you are in love with cannot be with you? Does that mean nothing makes sense anymore? Of course not. The art of finding a reason to live is finding another way to make life work. As long as you think it is worth it, do not stop looking for it. 

But how can we do that?

​We should recall who we are, what values are important to us. If that got lost a bit too in the course of living this is the first thing to do. Trying to be ourselves is always a very good path to walk, and we hear that dictum frequently- it is, however, easier said than done. Often we have boundaries, commitments, people to care for. What if if we just try to come as close as we can to that famous "being ourselves"? The dealing with a dangerous virus forces us to level up; we have to readjust and make the best of our commitments. What was alright before no longer works. The people in our lives must sometimes be caught if they fall, the situations we engage with now must all adjust and meet the new conditions in order to be sustained. To put it briefly, being ourselves should most likely be regarded differently as well.

Ask yourself what you need right now. This question is fundamental, and it's something we almost always forget to do. Check in with yourself, you will learn things about yourself that surprise you. Try to remember that life gets its drive from its polarity. What would we know of love if there wasn't pain? What would we know about desire if there wasn't missing the other one? What would we know about joy if there wasn't disappointment? If we understand and accept the keynote of those contrasts we understand life and love. And nothing, not fear or dark moments, can overshadow your light. At the end we will always, I promise you always, see the good outcomes. 

​There is a last point that works a miracle in challenging times. The word "sense" in the sentence "It makes sense" is not there for nothing. Life and love have a lot to do with our senses and sensuality. For example, if you can't touch the other one for some reason when you say goodnight, imagine them how they look when they sleep. If you cannot kiss them imagine how their lips would taste. If they can't be with you listen and dance to the music they shared. There are endless possibilities to love each other. 

Don't make too many plans. When there is one thing we have learned from COVID-19 it is that we all can be pretty spontaneous, right? Try to live your best life. Live your life as the best person you can be for yourself and the people you care for. And be kind to yourself. Your kindness, as always, will radiate from you to others. Like a ripple on a pond.
 
A happy and peaceful 2021 to you.