Love is All

I’m sitting on my tour bus with the window cracked while fresh air is blowing on my face.  The sun is casting gold on everything it seems.  We’re in rural Turkey traveling to see the old capitol of the Hitites and I can see the locals’ farmland for miles upon miles.  This may be selfish, but the thought comes to mind that this is all for me.  When I say me, I guess I don’t really mean JUST me, but that I’m included in the whole of mankind—that I have value in the beauty I see around me.  So often I doubt that I have anything truly worthwhile to offer the world, but when I look out of my window right now I only hear, “You are.”  What does that even mean? I’m moved to tears by it though—trying to cover them up with my sunglasses doesn’t really work.  Maybe it’s the notion that the converse “I’m nobody” isn’t true—a sense of purpose and a sense of being.  I GET to be alive, and not only that—I am spoiled.  For 29 days my hotel rooms, three meals, entrance fees to sites, flights, ground transportation and so much more is completely paid for.  This is literally thousands and thousands of dollars being spent on me. I don’t know if there are any words to do justice for the gratitude I have.  Thank you isn’t sufficient.  I’m honored doesn’t feel satisfactory.  I think a sigh of awe is closer but still isn’t enough.  My published words are pennies in comparison to the wonder I’m experiencing.  Turkey is splendor among extravagance—one of the most remarkable places I’ve ever travelled. 

I don’t have much to say in way of what we’re doing, but more about what I’m feeling from it all.  I picked up a book at an open air museum where Christians, during the Roman Empire, were forced to live in underground caves carved in a canyon.  The book is about Mevlânâ Rumi, a sufi poet/philosopher/lover/leader/whirling Durvish/man, and his affect on life 8 centuries ago through present day.  I think Rumi and I have been cut from the same cloth when I was stitched together because of the would-be subtitle to the movie of his life—“Love is all”.  I’ve known for about a year or a bit more that my soul’s truest name is something like “lover of people”.  I can’t help but feel drawn to do this with most people I meet—I just fall in love a lot.  When I say, “fall in love” I mean that in the sense of becoming an admirer of the lives I get to bump into.  With this has come ineptitude of being able to differentiate people “who take from me” and those “who give back”.  I’ve let too many people in that haven’t offered me much in the way of sincere love and its commonly ending up in feeling a heavy sense of self-doubt that I’m good enough.  Damn it, that’s just wrong!  I can relate to a quotation by Rumi, “You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already hanging around your neck!”  I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this sense that I’m not wearing diamonds, but a heavy ball and chain instead—and it’s this, my friends, that we need to release.  Life is meant to be filled with love not detest.  If we don’t acknowledge the value in our own agency we are truly lost people.  I know that I’m only beginning to touch the surface of this within my own life, but I’ll share what I’m being challenged to do: 1.) keep those who REALLY show love to you close and let all others go completely and without a grudge 2.) ask the question Rumi posed, “And you? When will you begin that long journey into yourself?”

Love to you, friend.