A letter from Love, inspired by Liz Gilbert
Today I am asking Love: What would you have me know about making mistakes?
Sometimes I feel love well up in me unprompted, and I don’t quite know what to do with it. Maybe I'm looking out over the harbor, or feeling a warm glow after visiting a friend, or just having a moment of respite from the overactive, often self-torturing, busy talk that usually fills my head.
In those moments I'll find this declaration working its way to the tip of my tongue: “I love _____!” but find that I can’t complete the sentence because I have no obvious object to attach that love to.
Why do we only use the verb love in this targeted way? Maybe it's a semantic byproduct of the transactional view we have of love as something to be given, received, exchanged, withheld, or lost.
We seem to intuitively sense that love is a dynamic presence. It is active and relational. It is by nature a thing in motion, which implies it has a source and a destination. Love is transmitted from Point A to Point B. Or, if it is addressed to no person or thing in particular, then it must at least be about a particular person or thing. I love you. I love myself. I love this soup, this home, this moment.
It feels good, this closing of the love circuit between subject and object, giver and receiver. I'm not suggesting it doesn't work that way or that we shouldn't be giving and receiving love. But if the transmittal of love from me to you, or from you to me, or from me to the soup, is the only way that we can experience love, no wonder we feel exiled from love in our solitary moments.
But what if love needs no object? What if love is just something that we can do, or be, or experience all by ourselves?
Maybe this can be a complete sentence: I love. Maybe we can just leave it at that.
Recently I’ve been feasting on Liz Gilbert’s beautiful Letters from Love Substack, in which she writes a letter to herself from the perspective of unconditional love. Her newsletter this week deals with our human fear of failure. In it, she writes, and invites us all to write, our answer to the question: What would Love have me know about mistakes?
Here is mine.
Dear Little Spark,
You have never failed and you cannot make a mistake.
Do you know this? That every move you make is held in a container that you can't see the shape of?
You are so afraid of making the wrong choice, of bringing unwanted experiences upon yourself. Afraid of others' anger, afraid of your own shame, afraid of every kind of loss.
Here's what I want you to know about your so-called mistakes and failures. They are not separate or different from your triumphs and successes. In fact, these seemingly opposite experiences — the highs and lows, the pleasurable and painful, the gains and losses — are actually one and the same. Each carries a piece of the other within it.
Your greatest growth is rooted in and spurred on by the very experiences you might work hard to avoid. Think back on the childhood challenges that made you who you are, and youthful experiments that taught you the laws of chemistry by blowing up in your face. Wouldn't it be a tragedy if you were to succeed in avoiding such things?
The good news I have for you today is that you can't avoid them. Because they are part of how this world works. And just as you can't eradicate loss, pain, or conflict, this also means you're not personally to blame for their general existence, or for their appearance in your own life from time to time.
Listen, honey, I know that hardship, disappointment, and stress are no fun. Loss is painful and the fear of pain is real. When they come, as they surely will, your job is just to be present to them, let them move through you, and listen to what they have to teach you.
I also understand that success and approval feel good. Of course you’ll seek them out; it’s your human instinct to do so. As with struggle, when plenty and triumph come to you, your job is just to be present to them, to let them move through you, and to listen to what they have to teach you. Don't squander these treasures by grasping them in an anxious fist.
So where can you find solid ground to rest on? Well, nowhere, of course. Because the human experience occurs in a groundless universe. Your error is in thinking that peace must be found in the elimination of risk or uncertainty. But that can’t be right, because the only constancy in this life is change, which is full of risk and uncertainty. So try looking at peace not as a destination but as a dance. Flow with constant change rather than fighting it. Let it pulse through you. Embrace the mystery and relish the suspense.
After all, who would want to watch a movie or read a story in which nothing ever happens, nothing grows, nothing dies, and nothing changes? Delight in creating and bearing witness to your own story with all its particular risks and rewards. Enjoy the drama and beauty of it all. Marvel at how intricately your story intersects with all the other unique stories that the people around you are creating.
This brings me to the other good news: You, my well-meaning, perfectly flawed human animal, are not the maestro of this symphony. I am; Love is. Just play your part, sweetheart. Don't flip ahead in the sheet music to “make sure” the somber notes will lighten up in the next movement. This composition needs both, and in your quiet and courageous moments, you know it.
Here’s the truth that will set you free if you let it: There is no resting place where it all works out and stays worked out. But! There's also no ultimate failure where everything is broken and stays that way. Total loss is impossible and death is an illusion as temporary as life. In fact, death has the seeds of life within it just as life contains the reality of death. How can you plant a new harvest without tilling the spent stalks of last season into the soil? Don't despair at empty husks or rotting fruit. They are the fruits and flowers of tomorrow's feast.
Your big flex is to pretend that you have the power, through your mistakes, to get yourself banished from Love. That you must heroically flatter, perform, or cajole your way back into Love’s good graces. But darling, you are not an alien in this world, a world that Love made out of its own substance. It’s all just life — your little life and Life writ large making harmonic patterns that you never need to orchestrate.
So, can you see now that you can't lose or fail at anything? In fact, the closest you can come to failing or losing is to forget this, and even that is just an ego dream.
You are held, you are home, and you are safe. Not in this body or on this planet, both of which are profoundly vulnerable and ultimately temporary! But in your essential, eternal, boundless self where the essence of all things resides. Sweet one, if you're looking for peace and liberation from suffering, this is as good as it gets — and it's pretty damn good.
Love, Love.
I really enjoyed reading this Maggie. And I have experienced love - it’s rising up in me unexpectedly without a “place to put it” the same sorta way. Thanks for putting words to this so I can explore it further.
This line: So try looking at peace not as a destination but as a dance.
Yes. Yes please. I need to dance more with peace and not just chase it.
Truly fantastic! I’ve been following LG’s “Letters from Love” from the beginning, this is a wonderful addition. Thx for sharing ❤️