Fall in f**king love. Just do it. That's what you're here for. And there are all kinds of perks and benefits for doing so. Not just Eros love - although we'll get to that in a minute. But all kinds of love are waiting for you to fall.
Why don't we commit fully? Are we scared if we attempt to write that great American novel that it will be a disaster so we don't even try? And yet love is calling us to write it anyway. Are we scared to take that acting class because we might discover that we're more talented than we could have ever imagined? Are we postponing going to law school or taking that vacation or enrolling in that dance class - although something in our heart - which is love by the way, is asking us to do it?
When we engage in the pursuance of love, our life simply becomes love.
But restrictions on love come from ourselves and they come in the form of the masks we wear. We adopt personas to keep us protected and separate from others.
Falling in love - in any form - rips those personas away. (Why do you think falling in love is so scary?)
We hear the word "authentic self" used a lot today. It's a good word, if not a little unclear. Let's just understand it as the true you, who accepts and loves him- or herself without the mask.
So it's really simply allowing yourself to accept who you are. Right now. Imperfections and all. Not just being okay with yourself when you win. Not just when you're pretty and have perfect 8-pack abs. Not just when you're popular and on a TV show and it seems everyone adores you. Not just when you're young and funny and the life of the party. But when nothing seems to go right and you wonder if you're really cut out for this thing called life. If you can love and accept yourself during those moments - that's really accepting the core of who you authentically are. Everything else is false love anyway. You can't just love yourself when you're "cool" or popular or have finally "made it" - that's disingenuous because the love part is predicated upon what you do or achieve. Those things are impermanent, always changing, and therefore based on the external.
Real love abides internally, which doesn't change. It comes from choosing yourself. Realizing you are enough. And accepting yourself in each moment.
A lot of the time the work we are doing in our work (whether it be acting or singing or dancing or writing) is to discover who we are and to fall in love with ourselves. That's why art is so personal and so powerful. That's also why it's healing and cathartic. It's not loving ourselves in a narcissistic, selfish way, it's actually acceptance of ourselves. (Perhaps even accepting the narcissistic and selfish parts.)
When we fall in love, we open up to parts of ourselves we've never experienced before. We think it's about the other person - but it's really about what the other person opens up in us.
Real love is to accept parts of ourselves that the other person (or the practice of our art) illuminates. Sometimes, that's the crunchy, weird, intolerant, impatient, douche-y parts of ourselves. If love - in the form of a person or a practice - shows you these parts, can you still love who you are? That's acceptance.
So that's love.
But to fall in love is to also see our magnificent selves in the beloved. And that's maybe even harder. Their eyes reflect back to us those f**king amazing parts of ourselves we don't see - or we don't believe we possess or are latent.
You mean, "I'm beautiful, and powerful, and inspiring and a bad-ass?"
Yep.
Falling in love, then, is falling in love with ourselves. The beloved reflects our divinity inside us.
It asks us to rise up to a new form. To step into a part of ourselves we may never have even new existed. That's why it's scary.
Tennessee Williams said, "The world is violent and mercurial - it will have its way with you. We are saved only by love - love for each other and the love that we pour into the art we feel compelled to share: being a parent; being a writer; being a painter; being a friend. We live in a perpetually burning building, and what we must save from it, all the time, is love."
If you're going to save it, you have to fall into it first. So do it. Fall in love with something today and watch how it actually saves you.