TRUE LOVER WAITS

 

 TRUE LOVER WAITS

 A true lover does not demand from the person he loves. He simply waits. In this sense, waiting is an expression of loving because the lover allows the other to exercise her freedom to respond. To wait is not a passive response. It is an active attention accorded to the person who is coming.

It is grounded in the belief that love is not just a matter of hope but also a matter of time. Loving as waiting is thus an embrace of time that flows naturally, not forcing it to happen but allowing it to tick and tack until the beloved comes.

Patience is a virtue that’s a waiting test. It accumulates inner strength to be able to receive the person who is coming. It is thus a call for an inner journey made through reflection and contemplation. Reflection because waiting forces the one who waits to ask and contemplate because loving is beholding.

On the one hand, if a lover inquires, he enters into self-knowledge. He comes to know more of himself and brings into consciousness some probable reasons why the beloved is delayed in her coming.

It is about entering into the stillness of a reasonable mind over an unpredictable appearance of an expected love.

In this mode, a lover becomes more in touch with himself which is a prerequisite to the act of self-giving to that person he loves. For this reason it was said, “You can only fully give yourself to another when you are fully yourself.”  Otherwise, the lover falls into the pit of loving partially to the disavowal of love itself.  This is precisely what that song means, “too much love will kill you,” or love isn’t enough.

It kills and it isn’t enough precisely because it was not actually given in full, consciously and willingly to the recipient of that love. If the coming of the beloved is prepared well, the lover is ready to accept the utter response of the beloved when she is there. Should the love be accepted or rejected. This is another question. But did he prepare for her coming? This is the question of waiting? What are you waiting for?

Loving is giving all without reserved. If something is withheld, then such love is not total. If something is not total, then it is partially true. If something is not wholly true, then it is not fully fruitful. If something is not fully fruitful, then it is not yet unconditional. If it is not yet unconditional, then it lacks the condition of being free. And to be free means to give all without reserved. It necessitates the uninhibited act of waiting. For then the lover becomes free as the beloved he is waiting for.

He has the gift of time to gather himself into wholeness so that he can love totally. In fact to become object having seen the wide horizon. He also becomes grounded in the cultivation of patience so that he can love fruitfully. He can journey within an act of self-possession so that he can love truly. And whether his love is received or rejected, to him, his love is himself, his act is his love, and his waiting is not in vain. He has found what he is searching for because he has become an embodiment of that love. The looking outside is after all, a looking within. The person of the beloved is after all the person that is himself not in a narcissistic sort of way, but in a fusion sort of way that the reason why you choose to love that person or this person is not that you are needy for love but that you want to share in the fullness of your life what is in you, love.