Should I stay or should I go?

For those who have just been hurt or are still hurting over broken vows or broken promises or are learning to cope with the recent heartbreak, now is the time for healing. It’s hard to pick up the pieces and start over. Harder when one hasn’t let go of feelings, emotions, memories and pains.

Once you are back to square one and the slate is again wiped clean, it’s good to start right when you are ready to start over. I read somewhere that the real pleasure is in returning to square one. A new beginning is a welcome gift. We’re all (or claim to be) experts in something. By the time we have survived several decades on this earth, we’ve become full-blown specialists in some walk of life.

DJ: We all make mistakes. The good thing is we can always start over. We can have a second chance. We learn. But one thing to be kept in mind is that while love is supposed to be unconditional, such clause still largely remains to be an ideal.

In the real world, love is economics too. There is supply and demand. It’s give and take. Someone somewhere at some point is bound to snap if he or she is always there for the giving and hardly on the receiving. A relationship is meant to refresh and not to drain.

M: Some people think they know how to love and deal with all aspects of a relationship—only to blow it due to pride or lack of discernment.

Many commit the same mistakes when it comes to relationships—like falling for someone who shares the same character flaws as the previous partner, choosing “bad boy/girl” types in the hopes of “redeeming” them or getting back into the vicious cycle of an abusive relationship. That’s why if you’re still single and unattached, before you start again and give a relationship another go, take the time to know yourself first.

Before we can know and love others, we have to know and love ourselves. It helps to remember a basic teaching from Zen master and author Shunryu Suzuki: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” We have to open ourselves to further and deeper self-knowledge to see new possibilities for a better appreciation of ourselves. This will help us know what we really want in life or in our relationships—especially romantic ones.

DJ: There are three essentials in a relationship: 1. Faith. It starts within. A person learns to trust others only when he or she trusts himself or herself. Being excessively jealous can stab a relationship through the heart with a knife!

2. Hope. It takes a lot to swallow the lump forming on one’s throat and not lose the perspective why the relationship is important in the first place. It’s normal to have disagreements. But they need to be balanced with enough hope believing that once the melodrama is over, you still both know that the relationship still means more than the situation.

3. Love. And it’s best measured in times of adversity rather than in situations of convenience. Like truth, it hurts. But it often prevails.

M: When we get to know ourselves once again, pursue our life purpose and our passions, share our blessings with the less fortunate and have a deeper appreciation of the here and now, we stand a better chance of fulfilling our search for love and happiness. We cannot rely on others to complete us or make us happy.

To expect so much is to invite disaster. When we start all over again, we learn and re-learn a few things. Experience (daw) is the best teacher.

DJ: A relationship is not an objective just as persons are not trophies. I have met people who always need to be in love. Often, they are just addicted to romance. No person or relationship is perfect. The real measure is on how two individuals are growing together as persons.

(ssinglestalk@yahoo.com)