Patience is a Virtue, but don’t sit around and wait, patiently for him to return.           

Love, Sweet Passionate Love. An energy, not an emotion, words my professor spoke to me or us in class back in the late 90’s at Antioch University Santa Barbara. I had struggled until recently to begin to understand what this really might mean. We want to believe that love is based on emotions. This is what society tells us.  That it is about sex, fulfilment, desires, needs being met, romance. And yet, every love story comes with a tale of how the two met. It is not a linear photograph. Remembering fondly, “When Harry Met Sally.” These two young adults met right in college; I believe they were driving somewhere together. Over the years, the two of them had a friendship, with husband/wife, break-ups, illness, and they still carried this bond, this fondness. It wasn’t until the very end of the movie that we see this, now older couple getting together, probably in their 30’s.

The energy of the Harry and Sally type of relationship is explained by saying that the Universe, God/Goddess, is bringing this couple together but it is not quite their time yet. Lessons need to be learned. A path needs to be followed. They will know each other, maybe even date for a brief period, but something bigger and more magnificent is not yet to come. How do we know when this type of relationship is within our lifetime? We don’t. It is not something you can hope for, pray for, yearn for, as this is a miracle of love that cannot be explained by hunting it down.

A boyfriend once told me “Nothing is Forever.” I think I was 20 at the time. It sounded scary to me. I felt that it meant our relationship would be limited, and of course it was, in a very unique way. While he and I ended, his mother and I began a very long relationship with her as my spiritual teacher, surrogate mother, and guide. His mother and I ended our relationship on the physical plane eleven years ago when she transitioned over to the other side.

A gal I grew up with, as our fathers were best friends have had a sisterly relationship that has spanned our entire life. There have been decades of no contact – for no real reason other than she is not good at letters and now emails. In between this time period, we would connect, and it was as if we had lost no time at all.

I love her relationship story. She has been married twice. The first husband a couple of decades and child toward the end. When that child was in utero, she and her husband met another couple in Lamaze class. During this time, the births of their daughters and throughout their marriages, the two families had a relationship. Twenty years ago, as I was visiting her home down South, we talked about her future. She had just ended the first marriage. She told me about this guy – in the other relationship that they had been friends with. She shared her fondness and admiration for him. She even told me, “If he ever gets a divorce, I am going to marry him.” It would be years before he did get a divorce, as it didn’t happen at the same time as hers. After he had had a chance to settle into bachelorhood and determine the next course for his future, he thought of my friend. He contacted her daughter and his daughter and asked their permission to date my friend. They gave him a resounding “Yes!” and the rest is history. They have now been married for about three or four years I believe.

Recently, another young woman, who I grew up with, introduced me to her new husband. She had been through quite a lot of crises in her life and some poor choices in partners. I am not as familiar with the story quite as intimately. I know that she lost her dad as a young adult and then turned to drink for some time. I asked her how she and her new husband had met. They had been to high school together and had re-connected not long before they married.

These relationships that I have had a chance to be a part of, they did not follow a normal course of action. This is not about answering questions in Cosmopolitan magazine or calling your girlfriends up to get their opinion; type of relationship. There was an energy that circled these people throughout their life until it was time for them to come together.

What I believe this is about is timing and being ready. Had these people gotten together first, it is very likely they would not have lasted. Children needed to be born in all of these circumstances but to different fathers/mothers. The child’s destiny was wrapped up in an entirely different energy. If you are with the right person, at the wrong time, as we see in “When Harry Met Sally,” it ends until the time is right.

I bring this up to explore the direction of our lives in a way you don’t hear much about. When we have an ending, or some type of painful experience, we often want to run from it. We want to sit in denial, to utilize good and sometimes bad coping skills. We want it to be over. Not much support is given to going with the pain and rising up from our crisis with the intent of reaching enlightenment. If all of the people mentioned above had given up, they would never have been with their partners today. They would not have allowed themselves, would have punished themselves, and they would have kept themselves hidden away.

We must go forward and stay open to the path that lies ahead. Perhaps though, this is karma. We have lessons we must learn from our past lives. Closure that needs to take place with other men/women, cleaning up a past life drama between us. We might meet that special someone, which unlocks the gate, yet fails to show us the path with them. I don’t feel that soul mates follow linear paths. Maybe some do, because this is what needed to be cleaned up from the past. Perhaps they were unable to be happy and live together and now they can. Perhaps though, we meet our soul’s mate and we are unable to recognize each other at first, from our previous lifetime. Our minds may be so filled with ego that we focus on using each other and destroying what we feel we cannot have. What we feel we do not deserve. And it could be that we just met when the circumstances were not right, for a variety of reasons.

Once long ago, whilst I sat on a school bus, a young girl said to me (paraphrased) “You have to be nice to all the boys because you never know if one day they will become your husband.” In that moment, I thought that sounded strange. Here was this prophetess sitting there chatting away with me about the meaning of life. In a small hick town, having no idea what was to become of us. Now, I have the opportunity on hand to find out.