big hug

This quote has been popping into my head, borderline intrusively today:

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it, and embrace them.”

Rumi

I’ve heard another variation that’s something like “and love them.” This is one of many quotes that have remained lodged into my soul over many years. In any case, in all of this downtime from surgery, I’ve been feeling many of my barriers. There will always be reasons not to try, not to love, not to care whether that’s with people, work, or my own life. They will never go away. In a moment of awareness today, my perspective eased and I tried to imagine myself pulling in all of my barriers for a big hug. I tried to imagine holding them close and observing them rather than banging my head against them, ruminating on them, or simply stopping at the point of my barriers. These are my barriers! This is what I have been tasked with sitting with in my life. I hope I learn every part of them, how they impact me, how I fall for them, why they are there, how they try to protect me, on and on.