I am indebted to Susan "Sue" Ball who inspired this conversation.
She was the one. That's something you only realize about someone in
retrospect. I've been
in love
with her deeply, passionately, thrillingly for as long as
I've known her. Literally. In
the first moment
I laid
eyes
on her, I said to her (quietly to myself)
"I love you.".
She told me later, in
the first moment
she laid
eyes
on me, she said (quietly to herself) "I adore you.". It
was mutual,
love
at first sight. That was 57 years ago. Recalling the relationships
I've had since then, it's clear to me that she was the one. I've been
in love
with her from the get-go. But the idea of her being the
one? I hadn't had enough experience of relationships yet to
get that. Neither did I get it during the next 50 years or so. But
after a process of
reflection
and elimination, I did get it: she was the one / she is the one. Of
all of life's
gifts,
I'm grateful to have had the experience of
real love,
of being
in love,
even beyond that which I create for myself.
How do I begin saying (or even trying to say) what "the one" is (or
was)? It's such an unspoken quality. Anything I say about
it, isn't really going to do it justice, and may even damage it. But if
I were to say what it is, its first attribute would be
joy,
joy
in being together,
joy
in
loving
and
being loved,
just
joy
in each other's
presence,
a quality colloquially defined as being with one's soul mate.
That's close ... and yet "soul mate" doesn't really cover it for me.
She came into
my life
more like
a gift,
my reward for being who I am. I could measure my worth just by virtue
of the fact that she'd showed up
in my life
at all.
Interestingly
enough, there've been other
people
with whom I've worked on projects for which I'm better known. That's
not a trivial distinction. If you are going to work closely with
someone for a long time, it works better when you
love
working together. But in addition to the two of us also working very
well together, she was the one to whom I wanted to go when working on
all those other projects with other
people,
was
complete.
In this regard, no one else came close. We would talk ... and talk ...
and talk.
She listened me
attentively - as if everything I said was
interesting.
My entire life
was validated by the
attention
she paid to me. Some others came close to imparting that quality. But
no one matched it the way she did - not for me at least. She was the
one.
She taught me how to make
love.
Not the physical aspect of it.
Human
bodies are pre-programmed with that. They are
on full automatic
with it. Rather, I'm referring to
the intimacy of it,
the closeness of it, the giving of oneself fully,
completely,
totally to another, with nothing held back. It's the kind of closeness
that removes any and
all lines of separation
between two
people,
leaving only one single being
ie leaving only
Life itself
manifest as one single being - even when there's more than one physical
manifestation. And her breath ... That's what I remember almost
more than anything else: her breath on my cheek, her warm, gentle,
sweet breath reminding me of my own living breathingness as if I hadn't
been aware of before. With her, I stopped taking it for granted.
Now as for "Could there be more than one 'the one'?", I don't know. The
designation "the one" seems to imply there's only one "the one" - that
is, if you're one of those fortunate enough to know one "the one" at
all. It's a rich
gift
if you do. And there isn't a checklist for validating the one. You'll
just know. That one "the one" will share
joy
and
love
with you in a way that doesn't so much confirm they're the one, as much
as it says something about what each of us has, realized or not: the
possibility of a natural
joy
and
love,
a natural
joy
and
love
which validates who we really are, which makes everything worthwhile.
