So I hopped over to Facebook briefly to check in a couple meteorologists to see how hazardous heading out might be later this afternoon. (I still haven't made coffee or breakfast, lunch now, and still have another 50pgs or so in the book but I'm so hungry now it's distracting me from reading) I had promised Waffles a long walk if it stayed warm enough, but 34F with drizzle/rain is miserable chill in the bones awful and liable to get us both sick so I told her not til the rain is past and so she took herself back to bed in her kennel and I went back to reading. (I did taker her outside obviously, but just around the circle not around the entire block -- and she was shivering teeth chattering by the time we made it back to the building; bare belly and all.) But anyway, I wanted to check in if it was liable to freeze up black ice or dip the temperature before going back above freezing. And while I was there, I decided to scroll a little and try to find something I liked to share. (As an introvert often permitting with my books and music and animals and tea, I make sure that I post beautiful/profound things on Facebook that make me happy so the people who care about me know I'm fine just introverting. I don't bother on other social media, but a lot of family and friends who are chosen family are on Facebook so it lets them know I'm alive and being a quirky hermit introvert Dani who will resurface whenever she's ready.) 

So I found this post from The Smart Witch (which I did share) and my heart just sort of resonated this really clear true tone recognizing, "THIS is what I was trying to articulate the other night and WHY it matters to me to want to know what he wants and how I could help him get closer to his greatest happiness or at the very least how I can make sure I don't get in his way of reaching his greatest happiness! THIS is what was promoting what I was trying to say!!! Exactly this!!" 

So here's the long quote:

"We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love. We must look deeply in order to see and understand the needs, aspirations, and suffering of the person we love. This is the ground of real love. You cannot resist loving another person when you really understand him or her.

From time to time, sit close to the one you love, hold his or her hand, and ask, 'Darling, do I understand you enough? Or am I making you suffer? Please tell me so that I can learn to love you properly. I don't want to make you suffer, and if I do so because of my ignorance, please tell me so that I can love you better, so that you can be happy." If you say this in a voice that communicates your real openness to understand, the other person may cry.

That is a good sign, because it means the door of understanding is opening and everything will be possible again. 

Maybe a father does not have time or is not brave enough to ask his son such a question. Then the love between them will not be as full as it could be. We need courage to ask these questions, but if we don't ask, the more we love, the more we may destroy the people we are trying to love. True love needs understanding. With understanding, the one we love will certainly flower.” 

 - Thich Nhat Hanh,  Peace Is Every Step: The Path of  Mindfulness in Everyday Life

I haven't read that book. I've never actually read or picked up ANY books by Thich Nhat Hanh though I know many quotes of his and there are a lot of my friends swear by home for spiritual growth to become better versions of oneself. It's not that I don't desire to read his works, eventually, I just have so many many things I'm interested in and want to read that I never made his books a priority to buy and they haven't yet found their way to me in little libraries or used bookstores.... 

So I only know that quote in the context of the quote itself not the larger work. But my heart did the Khalil Gibran/Rumi singing out in recognition at another soul expressing a truth I felt but didn't know how to explain WHY it mattered. That quote, that's the WHY it matters to me that I learn and know what he ACTUALLY wants for himself instead of assuming, so I don't hurt him again by assuming something like he'd not be hurt my absence because he has set his heart on someone/something else and then later on I learn that me making me leave him hurt him deeply.... I want to KNOW that something like that would hurt him so I then won't do it to him assuming he won't care but in actuality hurting him deeply. Yes you can grow from such hurt and sometimes you have to learn the hard way, but also we could find a better way like reflecting and questioning and realizing, "O hey, this will hurt both of us and isn't what either of us want -- so maybe let's not, k?" 

That's the sort of love I wish to embody. The love that asks and then waits to hear the answers that are the beloved's truth.  The sort of love that tries with intention and compassion to understand the beloved and what they need/want/don't want -- because if you don't do that, if you only sit in a selfish or ego love that recognizes your own wants and your assumptions about what you think their wants might be without actually trying to understand their needs, that's when your love can end up destroying things or making them suffer even if accidentally. Because it's selfish and all wrapped up in your own ego and self and not trying to truly understand them from their own side, their own wants/needs. You have to ask and keep asking what their happiness needs so you can make sure you're listening rather than assuming, so your love doesn't become the source of the rationalizations/assumptions that cause the beloved to hurt and suffer. That's why it's the sort of love I wish to embody, the kind that asks and cares to learn the truth behind the big questions of what the beloved knows to be their meaning/happiness/desires and what is needed to make it real. 

That quote is another way of explaining the why of it, of wrapping the head around what is so obvious to the heart, at least to me. And yeah, I know it's the sort of thing must run both ways to work, but it is only over myself and my own actions and choices that I can have control to free will try to be better about. I can hope he would agree and also try for it, but still for my own sake I must ask the questions and listen for the answers that are the truth not assumptions and begin there. With what I can try to do to make things better than the ways they have been. Other people must live and die, sink or swim, by their own free will choices. But this is mine, to ask from a place of genuine desire to understand and to be willing to wait for the answers that are truth rather than my own fabricated assumptions/overthinking/rationalizations. It's what I have. And it's why I said what would help me most would be to learn his truths.

And I stand by what I have said -- knowing what he wants/needs for his own happiness and knowing what I can do to help get there (or at least what I shouldn't do because if I do it, it takes him further from what he's seeking) is what I need most for my own path of growth and healing and unlearning to learn to be better together in the future than we have been in the recent past. 

I should really go eat something though. I'm at a chapter break and if I don't eat something now, I know myself and I won't eat until I finish the book.... (I am not very good at taking care of my own self for my own self's sake: stoic "I can endure this for this too shall pass" streak + ADHD time blindness + ADHD hyper focus = really bad at taking care of my own time based physical needs. I am much better at taking care of others I love and taking care of myself for the sake of others than I am at taking care of myself for my own sake.... I know this truth about me.)