I love you, keep going
On delighting in each other and beloved community
Two Women on Veranda Overlooking the sea by Marcel Rieder
Finding what matters to you is hard, and feeling safe enough to move toward it is harder. I found magic when I let my friends into the tangle of that mess alongside me, and I would love a world where more people sit in those spaces together.
Apprehension surrounded my creativity. I’d belittle exploring ceramics or sculpture as accident of circumstance or boredom. I’m not an artist, creating sculpture isn’t my dream, but I had a deep desire to find a format of expression that resonated with me. Giving that desire the space to bloom wouldn’t have been possible without seeing delight and encouragement in adult friendships.
finding the curiosities that scare us
For the most part, I’m writing because a close friend encouraged me to. I’ve written extensively about how difficult this exposure felt, and I wouldn’t have considered it a worthwhile risk without the gentle nudges of friends.
I’m no stranger to sitting in the silt of my personality, sifting through to try and piece together the mosaic of what I want to explore in my life. I’ve found glimmers of ideas and curiosities that mattered, but they’ve often felt a combination of unrealistic, silly, or delusional.
It’s rare to question our deepest desires, and even rarer to question the desires of those we love. People that understand you can mirror back the truth of what matters to you. Do you know the tangled, unresolved tension sat in the hearts of the people you care about? Do you have a sense of where they would take their lives if they knew they couldn’t fail? Unearthing the answers to these questions in ourselves and others is magical. Our most excitable, apprehensive selves sit behind these doors and rarely get spoken into existence.
delighting in each other as an expression of love
I believe the best model for love is the selfless, egoless love which parents try to give their children. I think about adults exploring identity as a parallel to the ways children explore risk-taking and play. Delighted faces and verbal encouragement teach children that experimentation is safe - it’s equally potent for adults taking risks.
Hearing enthusiasm about my new interests has moved mountains of self-doubt and pushed me deeper into new avenues in my life. It’s seeing delight when I talk passionately about something I’m writing or feeling the warmth of someone’s interest in the questions I’m asking of my world. When we give people we trust a direct line to those timid, curious rooms in ourselves, we allow their love to rewire apprehension into courage.
When I define love, I rely on Bell Hooks. She defined it as the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. My most loving relationships are deep friendships where we express love like this. It’s a love that never makes me feel smaller. They’re friendships that say that wasn’t silly, you’re figuring something out. What’s next? It’s building someone else without reward. I don’t believe there’s a special love we reserve for our friends, family, or romantic partners. Rather, that we mix the caring ingredients of affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust differently.
dissolving ego and embracing interdependence
Deep love demands we ask whether we’re the main character, or whether the growth and happiness of others matter just as much as our own.
“The truth is, if you want to make just one change in yourself that will improve your relationship(s)—literally, overnight—it would be to put your partner’s interest on an equal footing with your own.” - Bell Hooks
Dissolving ego around another means understanding the world as if seen through their eyes. It sees their identity, constraints, excitement and hope in the way they see them. Psychiatrist and author Scott Peck defines community as “a group of individuals who have learned how to communicate honestly with each other, whose relationships go deeper than their masks of composure, and who have developed some significant commitment to ‘rejoice together, mourn together,’ and to ‘delight in each other, and make other’s conditions our own.’”
Trying to take seriously these commitments within my friendships, I’ve noticed two significant ways my ego has stifled interdependence and community:
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I fail to shrug off my personal biases, beliefs, and perception. I’ve had to learn to appreciate the wonder and excitement surrounding others’ choices that I wouldn’t personally pursue. I’ve begun dialling up my respect for the challenges that others face, even if I don’t share those challenges myself. It’s an ongoing process, and I still struggle at times to let go of my own biases. I know I’m stuck inside my own head when I’m looking at a friend’s problems and thinking the solution is so straightforward. It’s rarely straightforward when we’re in the driving seat trying to navigate difficult situations ourselves.
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Competition & mimetic rivalry. Romantic partners and friends can be threatened by the possibility of each other’s change. It can be hard to encourage someone else’s success when it sits too close to the flame of our own desires. Luke Burgis has written extensively about this. It can crop up in strange places, and if I find I’m subconsciously reluctant to celebrate someone’s brilliance I have to understand whether I’m secretly competing with them and break out of the pattern.
These are moments where my laziness, selfishness or inner fears have swallowed the possibility of connection. Narcissism is the fastest way to extinguish the potential for loving interactions - it can’t coexist next to love. I regret these moments because I know how powerful words spoken without ego can be when someone needs to hear them. They’re words that sound like “I’m irrelevant in this, it’s all about you” and feel tender and generous.
Breaking down your ego in a relationship can look like doing something extraordinarily generous and giving someone more reason to believe they’re capable of doing their undoable. It breaks the cycle immediately. You’ll feel relief, see new strength in yourself, and in the quiet space between you and that person you’ll create new love, depth, and potential for change.