173. Any suffering in mature dating is just an invitation to see reality

At this mature stage of life you’ve seen, through experience, that affairs of the heart can be the most painful. The suffering of love is suffering at the top of the list. It can stop your whole life.

Of course we want it to go away; we’d give almost anything to stop the suffering because it hurts so badly. But there is a plus to suffering because it’s actually Unconditional Love inviting us to see reality. We’re being invited to see life as it really is, not the way we think it should be. As soon as we drop needing things to be “our way” and just accept them as they are, poof! all suffering evaporates. After all, it had no substance, no independent nature. It was only a thought, like the ghost under a child’s bed.

Whatever happens in your relationships with a date or partner – or with a relative or friend for that matter – is simply the way God or the Life Force is showing itself at that moment. We don’t often argue that the weather should be different. We know that’s insane. Without our judgments of good and bad, right and wrong, we can see life as it naturally is also. Nature is nature. It shows up as the weather, as the seasons of the year, as the in and out tides of the ocean, and as the functioning of humans, including you and me.

So suffering is really that gift that says, “Oops, you’re trying to play God, trying to make life be the way you want it rather than seeing it as it is.” In truth, do we ever really know, in the big picture, how “our” life should be? Isn’t it possible and even pretty likely that the Life Force that keeps the planets in place knows what it’s doing as it lives us? Your senior dating can be relaxed and enjoyable when you take yourself out of the judgment business and just watch life unfold, with all its magic, poetry, and mystery. You can live in the unknown, where every day is Christmas, offering gifts, surprises, and delights.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer