My first girlfriend is getting married. Congratulations! I recently met her and I would like to remember with this post a particular and, I think, important teaching of this moment.
Almost ten years ago it took me four years to be truly in peace with myself after the end of the relationship such that I was able again to see her, have a glass of wine together, laugh and share the latest news of our separated roads. I extremely value good friendships with past girlfriends and I don’t nurture the “I won’t talk to you again”, “I don’t need to know about you again”, or the “It’s not your business anymore” attitude. There are few people on Earth who know me as my past girlfriends do, a truth worth in itself the effort of finding peace and the road towards a friendship.
Today, we not only laugh and share the latest news, we even laugh at our own past drama. I wonder if there is a better laugh than the one at myself and my stubborn ability to feel hurt, angry, upset and to grieve for so long over meticulously elaborated dramatic episodes that are, in effect, inexistent.
I argue, those four years should have been four seconds, the four seconds of time that are worth inexistent episodes. Further, I believe, this is not just true for relationship endings, but all relationship arguments across relationship types. Inexistent. The difficult thing is just to truly realize this in every moment.
Wait a moment: divorce is inexistent? Divorce must exist; what about all the struggles, the lawyers, the agreements, the fights, the words, the hate, the vulgarities? My point is, if two would have given four seconds to all the little arguments that led to divorce, there would be no divorce. But divorce is, now, reality. Then we should try to give it the four seconds and start to walk down the road towards peace, the state in your heart that makes you soon laugh at your stubborn ability to elaborate hurt feelings; hopefully you will do it together with your past lover.
The episode is inexistent. What exists is altered reality. What counts is how peacefully you adapt to it.