You will never be able to escape from your heart.
So it is better to listen to what it has to say.– Paolo Coelho
During my trip home to Houston, I spent a lot of time reconnecting with a childhood friend.
She’s making a lot of changes in her life- slowly, sometimes with a lot of hesitation, but always with enthusiasm. We talked about the difficulty of “letting go”- she is one of the smartest people I have ever met, and ever since I’ve known her she’s always liked for things to be “just so”. Smart people and needing control are a deadly combination, ha.
She gave us homemade canelés and we popped them into our mouths. We drank wine on her rooftop, I made a somewhat clumsy attempt to teach her how to two-step around her pool (I blame the wine), and we decided on a whim to bring a domino set up. We watched the yellow moon rise and the clouds slink around slowly above us. We let ourselves feel giddy from the wetness of the humid air and the feeling of winning at dominos. We drank Dr. Pepper out of glass bottles and red solo cups. Everything is an adventure.
I asked her later, what if she could just let it be? Stealing a first kiss doesn’t mean it will lead to marriage. Taking a new job doesn’t mean it will lead to waiting around for pension and retirement. While I do think about end goals often, I try to let the journey be the goal. What if we stop holding back?
Happiness as journey. Love as adventure.
“Fall in love,” I read recently. “With everything: with work, with the city, with people. Don’t hold back. The second you start making decisions out of fear, you miss out on the best feelings in the universe. Let yourself be in love.”
Today I drive to Austin under the cloudy skies. I’ll get out of the car despite the lack of sunlight, I’ll fall in love with the bluebonnets, the sticky air, the promise of rain, the pop songs on my Spotify playlist, the rolled-down windows, the bare feet on grass, the kolache pit stops, the wide open Texas sky.
I may have always been unlucky in certain types of love, but I realized that it’s a waste of life to feel cynical about it. I will not give up on it, even if it means I have to look at love differently. If not for the possibility of love, what truly would keep us here on this earth?