I’ve learned, as a woman, I’ve always had the hardest time to let go in love. Which isn’t giving up, it’s releasing having control over it.

We are trained in life to work hard toward a goal, to act, plan, have a vision, hit milestones… as much as this is true and applicable for personal goals or career goals, yet it seems not to work at all in love. Because love isn’t a goal to achieve.

What I came to notice is love (or any form in which it can present itself like friendship, an enjoyable exchange, romantic love) is very free. It can’t be forced, directed, felt on command – love is this thing that just happens, and then it can just float away. Like a flower, it gifts you with its wonderful scent and beauty, but can be gone in the morning. We can’t hold onto it, we can’t grasp it, only celebrate it when it’s here, for how long it stays. I’m not saying that love can’t grow deeper or stay for a lifetime, I just feel it rarely remains unchanged. Even when you get married – a social construct to make love secure and confined, put on paper and embellished with lot of expectations – you’re not granted for love to stay.

So nowadays I have more acceptance around what I know love is – or at least how it shows up in life: like an unexpected surprise, a sunset you weren’t aware it was there till you looked. So love, if it comes for a day or stays for a lifetime, molding itself into different forms, it can only be appreciated.

So in love there is a lot of sitting, as in non doing, rather letting it happen by staying open to it, experiencing it without attaching a plan to it.

I don’t believe much in the phrase “fighting for love”. Surely, you might work through some issues, but fight and love just don’t go together. Love can be potent, yet can’t be forced. It comes to visit you, it finds you – you don’t search for it. It is a subtle as it is obvious, it is as delicate as it is strong.

My friend Candis met this man the other day. She said (I paraphrase): ” We had this beautiful interaction, fun, spontaneous, it gets you thinking how can one keep things like that, how not to spoil this feeling and not turn this man into another convoluted story of hurt?”

So that question made me think that… to be open to love is to have courage. To relax into it, even when fear shows up. To experience love is to appreciate it when it’s here, not clinging to it, making it your center. If it start to hurt it’s because you want to control or change the experience, then you know it’s time to sit back and let go.

So yeah, in love there is a lot of sitting.