One Apple A Day #609 - love and presence
"I'll protect you from the hooded claw
Keep the vampires from your door."
— The Power of Love, Frankie Goes to Hollywood
When we love someone, we want them to be happy. We want to protect them from any possible harm. We want to know and to let them feel that they are safe.
We create fences, made of love and affection, to keep all the evil of the world away.
Unfortunately, fences work in both directions. And sooner or later they become cages. Maybe large ones, perhaps beautifully decorated but still, cages.
So, here's another tension for me to reflect upon. The tension between the need to protect and make someone happy and the need to see them expressing all their extraordinary potential.
And then, while I'm writing these words, I realise that it's my ego who's talking. My ego with its needs and fears.
The fear of my own pain if someone I love gets hurt. The fear of my own ego if someone I love is not happy.
While I'm here, pondering on all these thoughts, my eyes go back to the card I picked this morning.
"Showing up for others."
And that tension, all of a sudden, sublimes into something else.
It's not about protecting. It's not about supporting or helping.
The best I can do is to show up for the one I love.
To be fully present.