Choose Differently

It’s funny how love stories work. There’s never really an end. Sure we like to imagine it’s cut and dry – two people live happily ever after… or two star-crossed lovers get tangled in their destinies. But even when we imagine the end, it isn’t really an end. Because life continues.

If two lives continue on together – after happily ever after, then the love story becomes about how the love develops or doesn’t. If two lives are star-crossed and never get the chance, then the story becomes about what those lives do afterward.

Even after we die, our loves stories don’t end. They continue on in the people we’ve touched and the world we’ve influenced as a result of the love we held or didn’t hold in our hearts. And the story unfolds from there. Ever and ever wider.

We live in a culture that believes that love is containable. That even if we don’t understand it, we can act it out by abiding by certain cultural norms. Fall in love, get married, have kids, grow old together, spoil grandchildren with candy, and then eventually die with a family intact.

For those of us lucky enough to experience a destiny that asked for this plan all along, we may never understand why it’s so difficult for others to follow it too. Because this is most widespread and culturally acceptable love story that we know. Anything else is a compromise.

Which is why so many of us try to tell ourselves that this must be how love goes. And why so many of us try to fit ourselves into a cultural box. Oftentimes despite the pain of a heart that tells us that it’s not working. Despite every worldly sign telling us it’s not working.

Perhaps our first lover who we married doesn’t work out. We aren’t right for each other. We grew together for a while, but now we are different people with different stories and different needs. What then? Do we continue to keep trying to make the story fit – even though it doesn’t fit anymore?

Or do we split up, and in splitting up go against the story we’ve had in our heads for so long. A story that our parents told us – even when it didn’t work out for them. A story their grandparents told to them – even though they haven’t smiled at each other in years.

There are so many points in our lives in which we have to confront the GRAND CONFLICT – the one in which the story in our heads is different from the story in our hearts. So many points in which we have to choose whether to do what we think is right… or what we know is right.

Perhaps the biggest source of suffering today is that most of us believe that what we think is more important than what we know. More important than what our hearts tell us. What our guts tell us. Or even what our parents told us with their hearts. If they couldn’t say it in words.

Luckily, our suffering never goes to waste. The world uses it to show a generation that lives beside us or a generation that comes after us what doesn’t work. Because they can see the sadness on our faces. Or because they can feel the pain in our hearts.

We will leave the work – and the rewards – to those who see our suffering. Those who choose to live a life abiding by what they know to be true. Not for others – we can’t know what others need. But rather for themselves. Those who move in the direction their hearts tell them to move.

And we will content ourselves with whatever world we’ve created out of lack of awareness. Or – if we are aware of our choice to ignore our hearts – then we will content ourselves with the knowledge that we sacrificed ourselves. So that others may use us as an example of what doesn’t work.

Ours is a noble role to play. But it isn’t fun. So I hope we choose differently.