Loving, Letting Go

This post is inspired by a poem written by a friend of mine, click link. She is such an amazing writer with inspiration and genuineness flowing with each word, I do highly suggest you read her blog.

Her poem speaks about how love can be defined by the absence of words and actions, as much as it can defined by the presence of both words and actions.

Personally, I think any form of love or connection for that matter should be something we constantly seek to show, because we all need reminders. But her poem reminded me of how love is also trusting the people we love to know themselves, to love themselves, to be themselves. And sometimes, above all, the kind of love we desire is one that allows us to express us as we are.

It is not easy.

Thankfully, I have role models for that; my mother is an amazing person when it comes to trusting her children knows best and loving from afar. I'm extremely proud of her, and have been doing my best to learn this form of faith and understanding =)

I particularly love this stanza:

"The kind of Love that places respect in the idea that
despite their well-meaning expectations and tendency to control,
by them do I not make my choices, nor from them do I claim my right to be my own soul."

In this year, I've learnt a lot about myself being away in a relatively different environment. I say relatively different because while it is geographically/physically different, I find myself bringing my routines from life back home and assimilating it with the life I have - and I think to some extent, we can't "get rid" of what we are, but we can learn and re-learn.

What I've learn is the importance of human relationships to me, as a base. It's one of those things where the presence of it enriches life, and the absence of it just throws me into an abyss. Maybe it has always been important to be, and I only realised it when I'm far away from comfort. Or maybe I knew it is always important to me and I made sure I kept to it when I'm put in a situation where I might lose it. I'm not really sure.

But well, that's one learning, and reading my friend's poem today reminds me of the old adage "If you love someone, let them go". If my parents never trusted me to let me leave, I might forever resent them for stopping me. And I assure you going home is more than the wanting to go back to a comfort zone, it's going back to certain values that I hold true.

Also, I am reminded of what a friend once told me long, long ago that sometimes we leave people because our presence is the one thing that hinders their growth from this point on. While I believe in growing together, I do agree with this point as well, so why not try and remove yourself from the equation, see what happens? After all, love is about the other person, as much as about yourself.

So this poem reminds me once again that one way to love anyone I care for is to trust that they know their best, and have faith that letting them go when they want to.

And it's not about the returning.