Yesterday, while soaking in a very hot bath, I meditated upon the idea of unconditional love. I often receive psychic messages while in the bathtub or the shower, as water seems to be a conduit for me. Simon and Garfunkel’s song, Bridge over Troubled Water came to my mind. It had been one of my favorite songs when I was growing up. It is a song of selflessness, of unconditional love.
How often is our love truly unconditional? So often when we fall in love, we are merely projecting our own wants and desires onto another person, hoping against all odds, that he will fulfill them. We stand before him with an empty bag like a child on Halloween, expecting him to fill our emptiness. If he is as needy as we are, we are two people with empty hearts, trying to fill and be filled from the void. There is a hole in the bottom of our hearts, so that any love that is poured into them is soon lost.
When I came out of my bath, about twenty minutes later, Bridge over Troubled Water was playing on NPR. These kinds of weird things happen to me frequently. Often when we are at our lowest, we meet someone who seems to shine the light into our darkness. He may have been weathering storms of his own. Will we be willing, in our own pain, to offer ourselves as a bridge, so that he may walk a little way out of his own troubles? Will she lay down her own burdens and meet him halfway?
Love is a complicated trajectory. If we make it our mission to find love, we will wind up with a broken heart. If our only desire is to give love, we will discover that our heart is already full. We can create a bridge together from which love can move from one heart to the other.
