87. Where’s the formula for finding love again? There is none, so date and be happy

Is there a formula for falling in love, or getting someone to fall in love with you? We often hear that if we do this or that, we’ll find the perfect mate. Yet our direct experience shows that it doesn’t work that way, and we often then blame ourselves. The mind comes up with all kinds of reasons why falling in love works for everyone else but doesn’t work for you. You think things like: I need to lose more weight. I need to be more bubbly when I’m out with with a guy. Women like surprises so I’ll try to be more clever with romantic surprises. I’m probably not finding The One because I’m getting bald.

The mind takes the pure Isness of life and divides it up into cause and effect, performance and reward. The mind wants to put labels on everything instead of just seeing life as it is. There are no fixed formulas for living. Living happens, and we see that when we look honestly. For example is there a formula for winning the lottery, writing a best-seller, producing a hit movie or falling in love?

After someone succeeds at something they often look at what happened and say, “I did that.” Then some produce a formula and tell us they can show us how. But what they’re offering is a description, not a prescription. It’s a description of the unique happening in their life. It doesn’t mean those happenings will appear in anyone else’s life. There are no prescriptions for life because we’re not separate entities or units that make life happen. Life is happening to us not from us.

Did the guys who started Google know they’d become billionaires? Was that even their goal? How about Bill Gates or Paul Allen, the founders of Microsoft? Do you think they knew exactly the steps to take to becomes the richest people on the planet? If the people who go around the country offering get-rich seminars really were able to teach that wouldn’t nearly all the people who attend be rich? I remember thinking for years that I must not be following formulas the right way because at that time I thought more wealth would set me free, and it wasn’t working. Now I know why: I wasn’t destined to be rich, obviously.

You can probably verify what I’m saying by just noticing your own life. Did you plan to have it turn out as it did? Are you in the career you thought you’d be in? Do you have the life you thought you’d have? I was raised as a good Catholic, from parents who never divorced. That was my goal also, to be a good husband and father, with grandchildren coming to visit and big, three-generation gatherings around the Thanksgiving table. Yet, after 17 years of marriage and six kids there was a divorce. I was devastated. That didn’t fit my plan for a good, Christian life at all. But it was reality. It happened.

Two years later I was married again, to a wonderful woman who was a gift in so many ways, not just to me but to my children as well. Eighteen years later she died of cancer. Did she plan that? Did I? No, it just happened.

The point is this: Life happens. When we watch it unfold and play itself out through us and everything else, life is easy and without problems. Maybe we’ll find love, maybe we won’t. If we’re meant to date and pursue another relationship at this mature stage in our lives, that’ll happen. And it can be a fun adventure when we just see things develop as they will. It’s not fun when we think we know what should be happening and it’s not. It’s not fun when we think we must be doing something wrong because we can’t create what we want.

What’s true in life, I’ve finally noticed, is that life never asks for my advice and it doesn’t pay any attention to my opinions. When I stop offering them and simply see that this “me” is just part of the functioning of the universe, there’s ease. There’s peace. There’s the grace of simply Being and watching life as it is.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer