~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Flirty Dozen ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For many people romance is the religion of our times. Many of us seem to expect the answers to life, love and happiness all to come from 'finding that special person'.
We look for god-like, or goddess-like, qualities in the other person and get disappointed if they don't live up to our expectations. However, perhaps it is the capacity to love people despite their frailties (or even because of them) that open us up to real happiness.
What makes us happy in a really good relationship, is that we give ourselves permission to love and to be loved. We decide that 'this person deserves to be loved' and we open ourselves up to allowing that to happen.
We then start to think about them and what we like about them more and more and gradually loves grows in us for that person. We little realize that it is because we are giving ourselves permission to think and feel a certain way about someone that we tap into the capacity to love that is our natural spiritual heritage.
There is nothing wrong with this. It is just that maybe we could love more people rather than saving most of it up for one person. Maybe it would be good to try loving a dozen people a bit rather than waiting for one person to love a lot! Even if one of the dozen became 'the one' we would still have the other eleven people to enjoy as good friends.
When I was a young boy of about 14 or 15 years old. I remember looking at the 'tough guys' in my school and wondering whether I should become like them. Then I noticed something: they were not happy people. It is hard to be happy and look tough at the same time! I decided that was not for me as I did not want to go that far.
However, I later realized that there is a part of me that is just like them. It is a part that takes a defensive stance against life and switches between fear and anger. It hard to think well of others when that is going on. That is what makes it hard to love other people and fall in love with our own lives.
How to cultivate good feelings about other people without getting disappointed so often that we end up becoming bitter and cynical? Most of us have accumulated enough hurt already. The answer is to spread our bets then we have a much better chance of finding a winner!
To come back to the earlier theme, maybe it is not about 'finding the one' but a matter of 'finding the dozen'. That is finding about a dozen people we can love fairly readily (in other words people we are not mean to us). If we get into the habit of thinking about what is good about those people (sort of like we would for a lover) we would soon find that our natural capacity to love would show itself.
Of course, some of our existing friends can be part of the dozen. The main point is that instead of being bit part players in our lives (while we are waiting for the main actor to come on stage) they get to have a central role. Giving them a central role enhances their lives as well as ours.
The dozen can be any mix of male or female (after all they may know the perfect partner for us who they end up introducing us to). The main thing is that love attracts more love and makes life much more interesting. It's a lot more fun than grumbling about the weather, the government, or our previous partner!
Even if you don't like this idea, maybe you have noticed that your happiest times were also the times when you were most loving - whether it was the love of life or the love of another person. I hope you find a way to rekindle that spark in your life: a way that sets you free of fear and anger and which enables you to have the love you seek by allowing you to begin to draw it from within yourself.
