Warriors” Rumi implores us to become, and not give in to despair at our ‘failures’, for they are opportunities, too, for learning and growth.
Come, come, whoever you are!
Wanderer, idolater, worshipper of fire,
Come even though you have been broken a hundred times!
Come, and come again,
Ours is not a caravan of despair!
Relationships work because of openness, vulnerability, and a desire to love, no matter what. When we approach our lovers with a bitter heart or with sadness and fear in our souls, that is what we bring to them and what our relationship becomes: “I have run to you because I am afraid of myself. Please don’t give me back to myself!”
No relationship can ‘save’ us from the problems we bring to it. Instead, it will magnify them so we see what needs to be healed and are given an opportunity to do so. If we find it hard to give love, for example, then it will be equally hard for love to find us, and this will be central to every relationship we have until we decide to heal it. Our relationships reveal these truths and this is our lover’s gift.
It is clinging to hope and expectations – the ‘what could have beens’ – that cause us pain when we absorb ourselves with relationships that have failed. When we learn from them and let go, however, our pain is released and we can greet new lovers with wisdom, dignity, and respect for ourselves and for them.
There is a simple law of the universe that embraces us in times of sorrow: Love seeks balance, and our pain now is equal in measure to the joy that will come. Trust that it will and allow yourself to be blessed for, as the Master of