All this love

Photo by Oskar Kadaksoo on Unsplash

Hello sweet friends,

Today’s letter was prompted by this Emeli Sande’s song “All this love” where the main question was “So what am I supposed to do with all this love?”… It is a beautiful song and Emeli Sande was the voice I always wanted to listened to for many years on repeat. This is a new release in 2023 that brought back to mind an old self.

Indeed, that is a subject I pick for today and being here raw and totally open I even thought I will make this letter more of a haiku. As you see,I am past the first line as I might have maybe few more things to jot down.

(Housekeeping: Substack is a platform where we write and we hope our friends will read our musings or new people will discover us and read our notes too. Many of the writers here are professional writers and all names I dearly respect and read. Aspiration for myself as well. Substack is the platform that lets me be raw and express myself as I wish. The way to keep reading my notes would be to subscribe and press the button below. This Sunday letter/offering is free. )

I love Sundays because they imply for me that my mind is rested, my heart is softer and I choose to do activities dear to my heart including just being or doing nothing. It can be sometimes just a blank space. Now- for my today’s self.

There is a distinction here that I wanted to mark somehow. Emeli Sande’s song did bring back few memories, few strong memories. I suddenly got a glimpse and even saw myself sitting at home thinking “I have so much love to offer but there is not way or no one to share it with.What am I going to do with all this love?” It was hurting. What I felt - this powerlessness - was hurting. I was also most probably still hearting or in recovery of a broken heart. To be honest - this is a very big topic and I am trying hard to focus and maintain what emerged this week once listening to this song.

“But what am I supposed to do with all this love?

Oh my God, my God, it’s building up

So what am I supposed to do

With all this love

All this love….”

I can still feel today the implosion. I can remember telling to myself softly that there will be a way.There should be a way to channel all this overwhelming feeling that I was full of love and there is no one to benefit of it. There were moments where I felt that I hold too much inside me.

It was most probably a transition from having an object of love to not having one.

I cannot say it more simple that that. We are conditioned to look for an object of love and be completely immersed into that one single object.

Then we start learning about impermanence of life. Not necessarily related to a particular “object” ( sounds funny for me now to call a very generalist term right now). The linear path we so much imagine we are on, suddenly starts to diverse, here there is a valley, here there comes a mountain, here there is a lake, an oasis, here there is a linear kind of road again for a little while, here there is a left, a right, and …..we can go on. And suddenly we know so deep down that nothing is linear. Everything is so much so much changing.

Here I am. Remembering that feeling of overwhelm. That is not with me anymore. I found some other bits and bobs about myself now.

One way to respond then to this huge dollop of love expanding out of my body was to throw myself into lots of things to show my love for everything. This is what I thought.

I cared for people and I wanted to care more.

I rooted for people and it was not enough, I wanted to hear more of their stories, to help,I wanted to do more. ( yes, sadly “do”).

One of my dreams was that I should have enough resources to be able to travel anywhere to support a family member, friend any time they needed.Anytime they would go through difficult time. I still have this dream. And partially I still fulfil it. The transition of my own states of figuring it out who I want to still become is that nowadays,I might think more before I jump. Not everyone needs this help.Deep consideration is needed here.

In my big research on how to share and bestow my fountain of love onto outside world,I have applied once to work for an NGO - as volunteer in their data base for emergency actions. The application process was smooth, I have ticked all the boxes, they offered a lot of flexibility with time (I was planning to use my holidays for this), and I did feel good about all. I was attaching myself to a new purpose. There is nothing like these invisible “hooks”again and again.Creating imaginary anchors in the world hoping they will sustain our floating.

The NGO had an interview process as well and here I am am on a skype call with a very kind lady. (Few good years back). She has highlighted the area they were operating in, tsunami affected areas, natural disasters affected areas, people loosing their everything including family members, traumas. I do remember clearly that my mind and words were saying “I can handle”, while my heart was “wrinkling” at the pain of others already and doubting my entire capacity that I could hold and be strong for others during life calamities.

The lady continues with the process and she says “if you choose to join, it should not be because you need healing yourself. This is not a good place to start with.”

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

Well, some messages are meant to reach out to me through random strangers. I felt fuzzy at time, I remember the home, the sofa I was sitting on, and even the light thought the large windows and so many mirrors reflected in the space. I felt sad at first and then I felt she was so right. And I was so wrong. I was looking in all wrong places to fill a void in myself. To replace an attachment or more precisely the loss of an attachment, with a new string but now adding a noble layer to it.Trying to show love somewhere I was not ready for at all.

So,If I even look back in time , the space that I felt it was bursting with love it was somehow a void.

Eventually, slowly slowly I took that truth to heart. The word “heal” marked me than and shyly I have started to work on it. In my own way.

This somehow involves a lot of reading.Also this involves me opening myself to listen to others deeply or ponder over things reaching out.

Not sure when I have started to acknowledge and be ever more so deeply moved by, but at some moment in time, I have started noticing the real LOVE. Ever present all around me. I have started noticing how my heart will get full and bursting almost from so many resources. I was discovering gratitude. The practice, the noticing. Not just the word. Before the hashtags and all.

As it happens, I have started a new book on a flight last night. And these paragraphs on gratitude and love spoke to me a lot.

Gratitude is first realising that we are recipients of care from many beings around us and then allowing that experience of being cared for to awaken vulnerability.

My practice of love is informed by community. I know love because i felt loved by so many people:family, friends, teachers, lovers, ancestors, deities and the earth hereself. The practice of lover is really about opening oneself to the love that is always being expressed to us.However for many of us, the work of opening to lover meaning to hold and experience the hurt we have received from surviving the psychic terrorism of conditional loving”.

The book is “The New Saints: from broken hearts to spiritual warriors” by Lama Rod Owens.

It is a punch. To hold onto. To feel again. All this love, what am I going to do with it. It is all here. In us first to recognize it.

Oh…. I will not leave you all here on this note. It is Sunday and some joy is also needed I would say, don’t you think?

On the same very plane. I was just setting up for the flight and did not have time to manage the handcarry luggage yet. It was blocking a bit the aisle(my bad). A gentleman stops (nowhere to pass by anyways) and asks me right away if I need help with the luggage. He was also a traveller not the flight attendant. My answer:

“I was just waiting for someone and you showed up”

And completely shocked by my “romantic comedy “sort of line -I moved into a simple answer. “Yes, please. It is very kind of you”…. Red cheeks and all of this embarrassment.

The gentleman sat next to me. He was my flight neighbour. Funny to ad, all our movements were perfectly aligned. The “synchronised putting- on-flight-socks contest” , the headsets, the reading materials, the glasses. All paired to perfection.

He was in fact very supportive with everything. Thanks again and again. One of the natural souls to whom helping people is inherent. The flight was a breeze really.

I normally do not see any of this on flights .However I had a window seat and all my attention was inadvertently moved inside the plane. One cannot stare at pitch dark outside the window, right?

I also found my way to a romantic comedy. “The Secret:Dare to Dream” with Katie Holmes and Josh Lucas.

(Do not be silly,I did not search for it on the plane!!! - oh my god, you guys! You think too much ahead. I have watched NYAD on the plane - also loved it, but really different mood and amazing performance. And I do not think I will pick swimming as my life purpose.)

Back to Katie Holmes in “Dare to Dream “movie.She was brilliant. I was my old and new self together. Brought me to tears and dreaming beautiful stories.Stories where love is present all around in community, in synchronicities, in the questions we ask, in our very mind that cannot process why a stranger would help us, in our perceived weaknesses and vulnerability.

May this love stay with you today and anytime you will find this letter.

Thank you.