How to Love Without Strangling
[Level 0: Technical] For when passion meets striving and becomes the obsession that strangles what you love.
What happens when you don't give the flame air, when you don't let the fire breathe?
It goes out.
It took me exactly 5 days of working on something I truly loved (and falling asleep on the job from sheer exhaustion) to realize this. I woke up and cried as the pattern finally dawned on me.
I'm learning (painfully slowly) that:
Passion doesn't have to mean smothering
Love doesn't have to mean strangling
You can be DEVOTED without being DESTROYED
I'm learning how to let the things I love... breathe.
That's the training that's still ongoing.
I hope to come back someday with my findings.
But for now, this is the field note: I saw the pattern. I'm in it. I'm learning.
Stay tuned.
P.S.
Can we appreciate how this post even came?
"I want to meditate, but I'm tired from good work”
Pass out for 2 hours on my mat
Begrudgingly go to bed
Tears come out of nowhere
Sudden insight
Post flows out from said insight
I feel a little better
Apparently even the lessons about not strangling arrive by... not forcing them. Who knew.