Today is the 9th anniversary of my first date with Jeff and, at 31 years old, I am struck by how incredibly blessed I am to have been with a partner for almost a decade and to truly feel that over 3,285 days of knowing with him I really have grown to love him more every day.
As I sit reflecting on this happy milestone, I notice something thematic for me lately is touched again. I hold up together the blessings only the Universe (and the-Universe-as-Jeff, or the "Other" in this case) could offer me and the sense of accomplishment I have for the way I (and Jeff-as-the-other-half-of-Us, which I really relate to as a part of "I") chose to show up for this connection. There feels to me like a fractaling infinitude of truth on either of these hands, but I'm pretty metaphorically right-handed in that I watch myself have a strong aesthetic preference for my sense of accomplishment.
I know this incredible love I have with Jeff can't be taken for granted and that it is far from an accident. I know I can read my statement of this belief as testimony to the synchronicity of life, the mystery of life as a karmic being, etc. but I tend to relate to it more readily as saying something like the Universe may have brought Us together but the life we built together is a living monument to the power and wisdom and devotion we have chosen in connection with one another. "We are really doing something right here."
Sharing this, I hold myself with a sort of humility. Laying out the duality, the non-duality seems obvious and beautiful and my little quirk of preference seems a little strange. I'm curious why I so often take such a stand for our agency and impactfulness and feel missed when those with the complementary aesthetic preference move to emphasize how much our love has relied on blessings beyond ourselves. Neither preference really calls for justification; neither are more or less "Right" than the other - no matter how fiercely I've held mine.
And then I rest in my clown, happy to embrace and even exaggerate the funny little quirk of my character and belly laugh with you about it.
Sure, I met the love of my life at 22!!! I was a baby!!!!! I could maybe live long enough to get to know him for SEVEN decades!!! Maybe more!!!!! This sort of good fortune is wildly beyond anything anyone could ever earn, deserve, accomplish.
I am the luckiest.
But I have also never met anyone who was so brave in seeking love, so fierce in her determination to grow to be a better partner, so devoted to the study of loving deeper, so thoughtful in weaving the way she was born together with the way she wants to be. I am so happy and in love and so incredibly shamelessly proud of myself.
I am the luckiest, but I'm mostly the best.