I chanced upon this image while going through my Instagram feed this morning and was struck by the simplicity of such a sublime thought! It's an art installation titled 'Love' by Ukrainian sculptor Alexander Milov, and it was a big hit at the Burning Man festival in Nevada last year. I somehow missed it doing the rounds on social media earlier. Perhaps this is the right time anyway because I can relate to it now in a way I probably wouldn’t have been able to earlier. Here you have two adults sitting with their backs against each other and heads hung in disappointment, while the inner child inside each of them breaks down those walls of ego, anger, resentment and just reaches out. It’s as simple as that! Yet, we spend entire lifetimes taking stock of every hurtful accusation, acidic barb, and deep gash that has come our way (while conveniently forgetting the ones we launched into motion ourselves).

How many beautiful relationships have we aborted along the way? How many opportunities have we missed and how much love have we wasted in this way? Not to mention, how unfair we’ve been not only to the connections we’ve lost, but also to ourselves. The reason I’m writing this post is because I’ve been the biggest perpetrator of this crime. Never having been adept at dealing with conflict and rejection, I always chose to walk away while making sure the doors shut behind me with a loud thud! And that was it – the doors would remain sealed, walls would spring up and another nail would be driven into the coffin that was my heart. I could offer several reasons for being that way but in the end, they just amount to excuses. Excuses for living like a coward, carefully wrapping my heart in plastic and bunging it into the freezer, in the ridiculous hope of protecting it from further damage. But we all grow up along the way and some of us take longer than others but when it happens, it can be liberating. 

My growing up happened as a result of self-awareness coupled with the desire to break free from the chains that were cutting into me. Of course, this wouldn’t have been possible without the help I received, most of all from love itself. By that I’m referring to certain people who are just the epitome of this confusing yet all-consuming emotion. Some people are like that - their very presence works as a powerful force that changes you in tiny subtle ways and then suddenly, one fine day you realize that you've been transformed in a very big way. These are the people who love you unabashedly and unapologetically and never give up on you, until you finally have no choice but to start loving yourself again. These are the people who come back over and over like frothy waves hitting against a hard rock and slowly, in time, they manage to soften the edges and wash over the pain. It doesn’t matter what kind of relationship you started out with or how it ended, in the end, it only works when you think of each other as friends. Everything else is too complicated and unnecessary... The word friend itself is so complete and comforting. To me, it means someone that I can just be myself with, no strings attached, no masks painted, no baggage weighing me down. In every other relationship, we end up with expectations that things need to be a certain way or else they won't work. We start dissecting and pulling apart every single shred and seam and for what? Just to end up feeling miserable. 

I’m lucky to have experienced this with two people who broke down the walls and returned with nothing but love and friendship. We may have set out on a different path and gotten lost along the way, but we managed to get past that and connect at a stronger and deeper level only because we held on to the friendship. It was this learning that has helped me with other connections as well. No matter how much it hurts, and it hurts like a bitch, once the pain subsides, I make it a point to reach out to the ones who matter. Some people are as important to me as oxygen and I know that cutting them off can only result in the death of something beautiful and precious.

The heart can be a tricky customer to please and often, against your best intentions, it will cause discomfort to you and the person you love. It can be a needy attention-seeking brat at times and sometimes, just an unreasonable diva. I know I am guilty of letting my heart rule my actions time and again, but I try and focus on the essence of what matters - that I don’t lose the people that are important to me. Even if things change or the days are fraught with challenges, in the end, I can't let it all slip away. People are precious, everything else is secondary. If I love you, I will hold on to you. If we can't be together the way we had imagined we would be, we will find a different way, a better way, and definitely a way that goes all the way.