Sometimes you cannot figure out life. This includes other people in your life. You just don’t know where on Earth they are coming from, what on Earth they are thinking of, and you draw conclusions of your own as to what they apparently are thinking of you, sometimes conclusions that are not favorable to you or to themselves. You may be totally flummoxed by what others do, and you may not ever understand why. They may not understand either. All you see is that something happened. Something changed. And change seems to be one of the hardest things for you to deal with especially when the change is not announced, is not clear, is not supposed to happen in your picture of the scheme of things. A best friend may no longer be a best friend. You may feel cold-shouldered, bereft, deeply at a loss to understand.
You do your best to understand. I know that. Try as you may, when someone is not forthcoming, does not help you understand, and you feel at a loss, you have to let it go. There is no law that another has to explain herself to you. It can be that the person herself doesn’t know why she did what she did or didn’t do what she didn’t do, doesn’t know how to explain to herself or to you and prefers to walk away.
People who may ignore you – how dare they ignore you – are, like you, doing the best they can.
People do fall off the track they may have been on. They don’t understand why any better than you. Maybe the romance of life is over. The fire has gone out. Human beings, to whatever extent, may not be true to themselves.
I am not saying that anyone or everyone has to be true to you. It is not a requirement to life in the world. Enjoy closeness when you have it, and if it leaves, you don’t have to be bereft. You can be glad that once you had the closeness. Sometimes library books do not get returned. Keys are lost. A meal is finished, and the food is all gone. Are not overdue library books a fact of life? Are not atoms moving a fact of life? Are not hearts that sometime dodge away also a fact of life? And lack of understanding is also a fact of life. You may never understand.
And here’s the thing: You don’t have to understand. Life does not have to give you explanations. Life does not owe you. And what seems like a parting to you, it’s okay. Life is made of partings. There is no conclusion you have to come to. Someone else’s difficulties at a given moment may have nothing to do with you. How you react certainly has to do with you.
The ocean waves come and go. Ocean waves are made of crests and troughs, and so life seems like that as well. If the ride is over, you had a nice one. In any case, you do not own other people, and it is not for you to hold resentment because their lives may change direction, nor is anyone to feel obliged because the bottom fell out of their lives and perhaps their love for you.
You cannot hold back the tide of love any more than you can hasten it. Let love be. Only the love in your own heart belongs to you. Others’ love in their hearts belongs to them. Beloveds, sometimes others are as distressed as you that their hearts became vacant. They cannot do anymore about it than you.
You had a gift, and now the gift has worn out. You are not dependent upon gifts given or gifts withdrawn. You are responsible for your own heart and all the love in it. Sometimes the best love you can give is to let go. It can only be your own love that you possess, and maybe not even that, for My heart rests within yours, and I never pull the plug.