Life: There are so many different ways of looking at it, just as there are so many approaches to interpret art, music or literature.
One thing is for certain: we are all, one way or another, trying to seek happiness – whatever we interpret that to be.
In a society that seems to favour seeking money over love, our route to happiness seems to leave us to decide upon which is the better destination to have in mind for the course of the journey.
Sometimes I find myself searching my heart and asking the same questions over and over:
What do I want in life? Is it money? Is it love? Is it possible to master both and therefore obtain ultimate happiness?
And then suddenly I am prompted by a few words from the bible: “You cannot serve both God and money”.
The words seem to ring resoundingly clear. Whether you’re a Christian or not is irrelevant. After all, we are all serving something by catering to its needs and trying to impress it.
When in a relationship, the only person you most deeply care about is your other half. In loving them, you want to assure their happiness and not just your own. It is a free-flowing joyous exchange of give and take, like blessing and receiving.
There really is nothing more blessed than being truly in love. For once life just seems so FULL and brimming over with the amazing love that you and your partner share. It is as if you are living two separate lives simultaneously: the one you have always dreamed of living and knew you were capable of living, contrasted against the one which reality calls you to: the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday…
True love is in fact, none of these things. It goes above and beyond because it is EXTRAORDINARY. Those who have come to know it are both fortunate and unfortunate; but to know it is infinitely better to have never known it at all.
This brings me to say that there is a time for everything, just as the book of Ecclesiastes says in the bible. Perhaps you have been arrested by Love’s stronghold and drowned in its deep and beautiful waters, perhaps you have not. And I use such language to describe it because falling in love is exactly that: falling and surrendering yourself into the arms of the person who loves you the most, but sooner or later, you will hit something – and usually – it’s reality. Sometimes people fall so hard that they never really recover. Others are still falling and may be fortunate enough never to collide with any such obstacle as time or reality or whatever it may be.
But your time will come too. If not now, then soon. There is a time to love and a time to be loved. One day you may be blessed enough to have both of these handed to you on a platter at the same time… but maybe this is not for you right now.
Either way, just remember that we are all desperate souls seeking some form of love, happiness, salvation… you name it! There is someone out there who might need you and in that time it is right that you serve them in whichever way you see fit.
So stop chasing dreams and begin to hold life lightly in your hands. It is precious and not to be smothered!
Catherine Lucy Rowland 