BeLoved

Quizá puedo ir a conocer Habibi cuando obscurezca, wrote a friend. Maybe I can get to know the Beloved when it’s dark.

At first I didn’t understand. And then I realized that he really is an angel, telling me the truth of life, whether he knows it or not. 

I came to know the Beloved when my life was dark, when the light of my path was obscured. And when I say Beloved, I mean God. Love. Everything.

My mother told me that after my brother died, she felt a piercing Joy/Pain. Pain at the loss, Joy at knowing him for that brief time. When Emmett died, I understood better what she meant. So grateful for the six years of companionship, so devastated at the loss of unconditional love. The perceived loss of unconditional love. Because I’ve come to realize that I’ve been loved all my life. I just didn’t remember. But my vision is clearer now, or my hearing more acute. I live in the Beloved, Habibi. I am surrounded by kindness, generosity, love.

I recently lost a boat fender, which is a big cushion that protects the hull when docking. In Spanish, it is called a defensa. So true! I am no longer playing it cool. “I hope to see you again,” I said to the man from Kaua’i at the surf break this week. His smile almost blinded me. Ask for what you want 100% of the time, wrote a columnist years ago. “If you don’t ask, you don’t get,” said a publisher last year.

I don’t want to regret not loving. I don’t want to regret not allowing others to love me. “Prickly,” another friend called me a decade ago, and I got defensive. But she was right. The better to keep Pain at a distance. But also Love. 

I have experienced Joy/Pain firsthand. And I am remembering that, yes, Joy always outweighs Pain. But only by infinity.

“Let my love open the door,” sings Pete Townshend. See me dancing through?