Let It Be

"So why does it hurt when relationships end?" she asked. "Well do you mean romantic relationships or like any relationship?" I replied. "Yeah, any relationship." she says.

Because we thought it will last forever... I realize as I am chatting with my two current best friends. I call these moments "divine revelations." Now depending on your beliefs or religion that might mean something else to you, however personally divine revelations are answers that come to me as I am having conversations and I find myself answering a question to which I do not really know the answer to but words just flow in a way that it ends up making sense and the answer is found. (Maybe that is a story for another day.)

Back to the question though, why does any relationship hurt when it ends? Some even haunt us for a while as we try to figure out where on earth it started going down hill. Well, my theory might be wrong or you might have a better theory but right now this is what seems to make sense to me. So allow me to take you through it.

Naturally, we are control freaks. Yes, each one of us. We probably portray it in different ways, different levels but we surely all do love to control. Which makes sense, the more control you have over things, the more your mind continues to trick you that you have figured things out, that your life has a purpose and a meaning. S/o to those who are able to control the amount of calories they intake, to those who are able to control their bodies, hitting the gym consistently, for those who have been able to control their thoughts and many more things that we often battle with. However, the sad reality is that when it comes to the affairs of the heart there is no such thing as control, and if you have ever been accused of being controlling in a relationship, let me just say I am sorry because I can not even imagine how exhausting it is to control those things that live within us that are called emotions and feelings.

I truly believe that the heart has a life of its own and with that being said, I believe that all the kinds of emotions that we feel within us that are reflected through our actions are the obvious proofs that we are alive, that we feel, that we exist. But the difference between controlling what you eat and what you feel is that you can literally choose to eat an apple instead of eating chocolate cake because you can see it, so you can tell your mind that you want to fit into that wedding dress in a couple of months so eating the apple will help that process more than that delicious heavenly chocolate cake HOWEVER that does not apply to the heart. You can not hold emotions in your hands, you can not select what to feel and what not to feel. As it has been said; "the heart wants what it wants" and I could add to that and say: "what it wants lasts as long as it wants to."

Which leads us to the answer to our question above. Relationships, contrary to the popular belief, do not exist to necessarily last forever. That would be ideal, to be honest, wonderful and every other adjective that describes something "nice." Unfortunately, it is not the case. The sole purpose of any kind of relationship is for it "To be"period. It is meant to exist, to happen, to be. But then it happens in a world of control freaks, so the moment a connection is made, we automatically cage it with so much greed thinking that we have finally found love, true friendship, or any other thing that we have always been seeking for.

The story proceeds, after caging it, we label it; my love, my boyfriend, my best friend, my confidant, my sister, my this, my that, my this, my that (control... right there) then we time it; this is going to last forever, best friend for life, my forever person, until death do us part (control... right there) then it is ours.

Breaking news; YOU JUST PLAYED YOURSELF! The mind did an excellent job at tricking you into thinking that you now own that thing, that relationship and that it is definitely going to last forever but honey, it did not tell you that you have no say on how long it is going to last because you did not create it. Only the creator of any existent thing decides how long this thing will last. In this case, who is the creator of this relationship? Who made this connection? Who? Definitely not you. So in short, we have no say on how long it gets to last.

And that is why it hurts. Because it ends and when it does, we try so hard to stretch the life out if till it gets bloody. We start forcing things, forcing feelings, forcing the words "I love you" out of our mouths. We try to recreate emotions that are long gone and in that process we are exhausting our heart and by the time we finally let it go, our hearts, souls, and bodies are sore because we fought a battle that was never meant to be fought.

Now please do not get me wrong or call me pessimistic. I am not saying that there are no relationships that are meant to last forever, they are there and I even root for them but all I am saying is that instead of placing our expectations on something like a relationship, how about we try to let it be? Let it grow, bend or flourish in the direction it is supposed to. Let it grow as tall as it is supposed to. Let it exist without overwhelming it with our human needs and greeds and just let it bring the light it is supposed to in our lives that way when it ends... we can now actually smile that it happened because we were able to keep all the goodness that it had to offer to us and learn from the lessons it taught us.

So friend, let it be... let it be.