When you fall in love with someone, you imagine what you feel today will last a lifetime. Your partner too will feel exactly the same way till the end of time. When it ends, very often without prior intimation, we are left bewildered, shocked, and unable to comprehend what just happened. Usually, there is anger and disappointment, but most of all, there is hurt. A feeling of being cheated because the relationship will not last the lifetime you imagined it would.
In cultures the world over, marriage vows are made as a promise to love someone till the end of time. Whether the love remains or not, the emphasis on being together till eternity is very emphatic and defines who succeeded and who didn't. It's often the reason why people, despite their unhappiness don't part. Even though it's the completely logical thing to do, they don't, because they would have failed the "relationship test" of lasting a lifetime.
When we are unhappy with a place we are visiting, we don't hesitate to walk away; when we are less than satisfied with what we are doing, we don't hesitate to make another choice. Yet, we will stay in unhappy relationships for years.
People say it often when they are intimate, "I will love you 'forever'" and frankly, I don't know what it means. How do you know that? How do you know that the feelings you are experiencing today, in this moment, will last for eternity? You don't.
All you know is that what you feel right now is love, and it's true. Yet there is so much premium on the confirmation that what you feel in this moment, you promise it will last for the rest of your life. How can anyone vow such a thing? Does it mean you were disloyal if you fell out of love after a few years?
Time is a construct of our own imagination; today, yesterday, and tomorrow are simply the cycle of life, the morning dawn and the sun setting...again and again and yet again. Love and our feelings are not.
So when we say forever, we mean till the day I die; I promise to love and behold you. If I fall out of love....does that mean it wasn't true?
If you meet someone special and they are in your life for five years, and they are beyond remarkable, and then you have to part....does it mean that those moments had no meaning?
Yet there are so many people focused on the concept of "eternity" they cannot bear the fact that what they have with someone will one day come to an end. And in the end, it will. Through death, through divorce, through parting ways, through time and circumstances....but it will come to an end. One of you will end up alone.
The realization that what we have today may or may not last a lifetime should not be a reason for sadness but one for reflection. We evolve as people every day, so what I loved and liked as an 18-year-old are not always the same things I love 25 years later.
Instagram is filled with messages for people who have parted ways, messages of letting go, not turning back, as if to write off what happened. To dismiss someone from your life because they were not around for as long as you hoped they would have. Maybe they were around for a few, and if there was beauty, honesty and laughter in the time you shared, then it was real. Real love is all you should look for, however brief and beautiful.."and they lived happily ever after." is a myth.
Think back on a relationship you cherished and how it made you feel. Similarly, think of a dear friend who was a source of continued care and kindness. Sometimes the relationship lasts several years, and they stay special, but we often measure the depth of our relationships by its length. "We've been together for 35 years." "We've been friends for over 40 years." Yet so many of these relationships have crossed their expiry, they have dried up like an empty well. Yet the fascination with time and the many milestones gone by, continue to define how special it is.
Have you ever considered that who you are close to, is possibly just a habit? There's a comfort we derive from what and who we have always known. People who don't demand that we bring the best version of ourselves forward.... people who don't expect that we have fallen in love with our own self and are no longer in love with them. When we don't seek new friendships, or new experiences, we rob ourselves of the tremendous possibility to start anew and not hang on to the notion of 'forever and ever'. It isn't that old is bad, some old friends are to be cherished.... because the relationship is special and they bring with them precious moments of life. Moments that last us a lifetime.
Instead of the focus on the amount of time spent together, we could focus on how beautiful those moments were. When we encounter new people, we experience the possibility of new experiences and certainly new emotions. What if you could discover a friend wherever you went? No matter if I meet you for just a day or so much more. No matter that we were together, no more than an evening together. It is enough.
Forever is a construct that exists in our imagination, but our experience of the true beauty of life, is in this moment. Allowing you to love fully but with complete detachment.
Whatever relationship you are in today, cherish it, enjoy it, give it your 100%, every moment of every day. Till….. it comes to an end. Because it will end. At which time, you should have no regrets.
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