When Love Says Yes (The Truth About Perfect Relationships)

Transcript

“Change your heart, look around you

Change your heart, will astound you

I need your lovin' like the sunshine

Everybody's got to learn sometime.”

— Beck

There is a deep truth that lies at the heart of every beautiful and meaningful connection, which is that Love’s deepest expression and highest calling reveals itself not in those easy and harmonious moments of a relationship when everything is going smoothly, but in those raw and messy spaces when we look at another's complete being – their light and their shadow, their patterns, imperfections, wounds, and just plain messiness, and instead of turning away, we offer them the most profound gift possible: a life affirming acceptance that whispers 'yes' to their entire being.

And this 'yes' becomes a powerful testament to our capacity for grace as Human Beings. To our capacity to hold space for not just the easy aspects of our humanity, but the full spectrum of it. In this moment of saying Yes to someone or even to ourselves, we affirm the value not just of the other person and the present moment of our relationship with them, but of the entire sacred odyssey of a life unfolding that we share with them — of all that we are, of all that we've been, and all that we're becoming, individually and together.

The journey of learning how to love - both ourselves and another soul - is perhaps humanity's most sacred and most challenging pilgrimage, and in my eyes, the greatest journey one can ever hope to embark one. It asks everything of us, while promising nothing in return. And on this journey, there are moments when it feels damn near impossible to love, but in my heart I know this to be true: that without a brave commitment to love again and again, without the holy determination that chooses to stay, that choose to embrace another person’s complete being, we don’t stand a chance at experiencing the most profound gift and privilege that life offers all of us — the privilege of loving and being loved.

This desire to want to be loved fully for all that one is, in all of our glory and shame, in all of our perfections and imperfections, is part of the very fabric of what it means to be Human. But this kind of love isn’t one that is freely given, it’s one that must be earned through the quiet but determined courage of showing up every day, and repeatedly saying yes to all that another person is, especially when it would be so much easier to just walk away.

Think about for a moment, the stories that deeply move us – they're never really about the plot or the special effects, no. They're about the raw, and beautiful humanity that shines through every character, and every relationship. And even when we fall in love with characters who aren't human at all, like our beloved WALL-E, it's because they mirror back to us the very essence of what makes us human – our longings, especially our longing for connection and our struggles to find that. These kinds of stories captivate us and move us because they speak to a truth we all know in our hearts: which is that it's our imperfect and complex humanity that makes any story worth telling and worth living.

What it means to be human, our humanity, with all of its complexities, ugliness and beauty, forms the essential core and beating heart of any truly great and meaningful story. And the same goes for real life stories, with real life individuals.

Relationships are the beating heart of our lives, at the heart of why we do what we do, and ultimately at the heart of what makes life not only bearable but meaningful and worth living. And even if one were to say that relationships are not a priority to them and they want for example to focus exclusively on achieving their life mission to make the world a better place, the reason that most people have this desire to make the world a better place is because of people, or the animals that we share this planet with, or the planet herself, but it is ultimately about a relationship with the other. It’s about Love.

Our lives here on Earth find their deepest meaning in the hearts we touch and in the lives we enrich. We need to know our presence here on Earth meant something to someone, otherwise, for what are we doing anything at all ?

What is all our striving, our innovation, our ceaseless forward motion for, if not for love itself ? Every discovery, every creation, every art work that moves us, every step of progress forward, is this not a love letter to humanity itself ? And yet every progress we make as a species loses its meaning without remembering why we’re doing this, the why being the tender thread of our love that binds us to one another and makes this all worthwhile to begin with.

And in our relationships, not only do we want to be loved for all that we are, but we also want to share our life, we want to share our sorrows and our joys with people who are deeply meaningful to us and with whom we honestly can’t imagine a life without.

It’s inevitable that eventually, we will lose not only the people we love by death, but as Hannah Arendt (ah-reint) says eventually, “We will lose everything we love, including our lives.” That is a fact of life.

But sometimes we lose people or relationships, prematurely, due to a lack of tolerance, compassion and wisdom, which is something I’ve learned from experience in my own journey. That sometimes we lose our most precious connections, the people we love the most because we’re simply not able bear the messy, imperfect and raw truth of human love, of what it means to actually love another human being.

And that’s a tragedy.

I don’t know when exactly our expectations of relationships started to change for the worst, when we started to expect relationships to come wrapped in a neat and pristine package, free from the complex mess of human nature, but regardless, this cruel intolerance of human imperfection is costing us much more than our relationships, it’s costing us our humanity, which has far reaching implications down the road.

Our intolerance of human nature creates ripples of disconnection that echo far beyond our own personal lives. Because this isn't just about broken bonds, the deeper implication here is about the gradual dimming of our capacity to love, to relate to one another, and to form meaningful and long lasting relationships with each other.

Because in losing sight of another person’s humanity, we also loose sight of our own. But if, we redeem the other person with our love, then we also redeem and save ourselves in the process. Because we affirm not only their worthiness with our love, but our own as well.

And by Love what I mean is compassion, understanding, forgiveness, tolerance, grace, mercy, patience and kindness. All qualities that this world seems to be severely lacking in, for the most part. And a life without these is Hell because Hell is the absence of Love.

And so without a commitment to learning how to love deeply and better, we don’t stand a chance at truly living, because what is to live but to love ? Whether one loves another human being, or a work they feel deeply passionate about, or a great moving piece of music, or a cause they believe in, or an animal, whatever we direct and pour our love into, Love is the core of what gives our existence its deepest meaning.

So Love we must if we are to truly live. To learn how to love is to learn how to truly live, in the most profound way possible.

And if we deny another person their humanity in the name of perfection, if we deprive them of the right to be human, the right to fall and make mistakes, then we also deprive ourselves of that fundamental right and need.

I know it’s said that we can’t save each other, and while I understand where that statement comes from, I think there’s a deeper truth in this idea of saving one another that many people miss out on.

It’s true that the desire to want to save another person can be a disempowering act for the other person because for the most part, people have the power and ability to act of their own accord and steer their own life in a positive direction. So that is true.

But here I speak of salvation not in terms of rescuing or fixing another person and doing for them what they are capable of doing for themselves, but salvation in terms of offering each other the gift of love, the gift of acceptance. You know life is hard enough as it is, life is a constant never-ending battleground, but why must we make it even more difficult with our own intolerance of our human nature ?

In the face of our mistakes, and all the ways we unfortunately deeply hurt the ones that we love the most, we can choose to offer compassion and understanding to one another, instead of the condemnation we so freely hand out to each other today, as exemplified by cancel culture. It’s in those crucial moments when we so royally mess up, that we can save each other from the claws of shame, unworthiness, self-loathing.

This is how we can truly save each other - not through grand gestures of rescue, but through small, daily acts of human kindness and decency.

But we can only do for another what we’ve learned to do for ourselves, even if just a little bit. Compassion begins within. And so the more we practice it the better we become at it, and trust me we’ll have plenty of opportunities to develop our ability to be compassionate seeing as we are extremely fallible creatures bound to make several mistakes throughout the course of our lives.

But that’s part of what makes us so beautiful and so mesmerizing, that’s why we write stories about what it means to be human, in all of its beauty and tragedy.

And that’s also why I deeply believe that we are responsible for each other, and that we really are our brother’s keeper or sister’s keeper because we’re all we’ve got at the end of the day. In a vast universe beyond our comprehension, we’re all we’ve got, we’re it, we are each other’s only hope as a species.

So it is a responsibility to learn how to love, however imperfectly we might love, because in learning how to truly love, we help make the world a better and more beautiful place to live in, but in failing to love, we continue to fashion a world more like Hell.

But as a species it seems we’ve forgotten this. We are, understandably, so selective about which parts of the human experience we want and don't want, and this selectiveness also extends to our relationships, but human beings are deeply complex creatures, each with their own pain, their own secret battles, and their own shadows.

And if we only accept the polished version of someone when they’re on their best behavior, and run at the first sign of their messy flaws and patterns, we miss out on true love. And how can we build anything real if we're only willing to accept the attractive face of someone’s personality, the highlight reel of someone's being ? What kind of depth of intimacy can you have in a relationship like that ?

These are not the kinds of relationships I want, those surface level shallow relationships that can only handle so much of a person, because that’s not real. And I want something real. I choose to have the kinds of relationships and loves in my life where two souls dare to plunge into the depths of their beings, and where every shared truth, every vulnerable moment, every conflict and every difficult conversation experienced between the two of us becomes a beautiful thread in the tapestry of our shared love and relationship.

That's the kind of love that leaves a beautiful mark on your spirit, the kind of love that changes you - not because it's perfect, but because it's real. Because someone finally saw all of you, and stayed through the hard parts and the easy parts. And ultimately that’s what we all want, we want to be witnessed in our entirety and embraced not despite our imperfections, but because of them, and I mean truly because of them.

True love isn't a selective embrace.. it’s a complete acceptance that reaches into the depths of who we are. It's when we learn how to stay, how to breathe through the storms, how to hold space when everything within us whispers 'run,' that we discover the transformational beauty of true connection.

I used to be a runner in my life, but my journey has taught me that true growth isn't just about changing or improving ourselves, that’s only a part of the journey. In the end, true growth is demonstrated in our ability to remain present and not run, in our ability to be brave enough to say ‘yes’ to the challenges of relationships.

Challenges in relationships aren’t obstacles to run away from, they’re opportunities for deeper intimacy. But only if, both Souls can recognize these as such. If only one Soul understands this, then the conflicts will remain insurmountable walls that continue to separate us, rather than bridges waiting to be crossed to lead us to depths of intimacy we never even knew possible. But if only one heart beats to this understanding, then the melody of these Soul’s love remains incomplete, and the bridge half-built as it waits for the two Souls to meet in the middle of their shared understanding.

In the unforgettable final scene of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, one of the greatest films of all time, we witness a raw moment of truth between two souls who have forgotten their shared past, because they both chose to have their memories of their romantic relationship erased. And now reunited, they’re standing in a hallway discussing possibly getting back together, because Joel sees Clementine with new eyes now, unmarred by his previous memory of her, and he says that he honestly can’t see anything he doesn’t like about her, and she says “but you will, you will find things that you dislike about me and I’ll get bored of you and feel trapped because that’s what happens with me.” To which Joel simply says “Okay.”

That scene gets me every time, because essentially Clementine here is offering Joel a vision of the future by saying: 'Listen, you will see my shadows, my complexities and my patterns and you will come to dislike that about me” And in Joel's simple response of saying 'Okay' lies perhaps the purest expression of love I’ve ever seen in a film: because that sentence beautifully shows Joel’s understanding of love. That Love is the total acceptance of another’s being and their truth, and a brave willingness to embrace the journey ahead, knowing it won't be perfect, but I'm still choosing you anyway.

That right there is love. Real, mature love. Not the polished fantasies we're sold in most love stories, but the raw, breathtaking reality of what real relationships are like. And I think it’s why the film resonates so deeply with so many people because in our Soul we understand that the truly meaningful and beautiful relationships aren’t the perfect ones, but the real ones. The ones where both people chose to say and grow together, despite their imperfections, neuroticism, and despite the challenges and the messiness of being human, despite it all, they still chose to stay.

And not only that, but there’s also something so profoundly beautiful and moving about choosing the same love or the same person twice, or however many times you choose someone, while knowing that you both have a potential to not work out, since you didn't work out in the past. And this reminds me of the Oracle’s wisdom in The Matrix when she says

“The real test for any choice is having to make the same choice again… knowing full well what it might cost… I guess I feel pretty good about that choice… cause here I am, at it again.”

In this final scene of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, my interpretation of it is that Joel and Clementine chose to take the same leap again, but this time with eyes wide open. Despite having once chosen to forget each other, here they are again, drawn back to this sacred moment of choice. Will they stay or will they go ? And in their willingness to stay, to begin again, we witness perhaps the purest form of hope - not the naive optimism of first love, but the weathered wisdom of hearts that understand the cost of loving deeply, and still, they choose it anyway. And this time, perhaps, they'll learn to stay when the storms come, to grow through the challenges rather than run from them, and thereby transform their past wounds into future wisdom.

There’s just so much we can learn from this film about how to love and how to live and so far, this is the deepest wisdom that I’ve gleaned from this masterpiece of a film, to learn to develop a heart big enough and wide enough to embrace the complexity of our shared humanity.

And that when I falter in loving you, which I will, when my own pain speaks louder than my heart, which it will at times, grant me the grace of your patience and forgiveness, please. Keep a door open in your heart for me, but don’t shut me out and leave me in the cold barren desert of a life without you, because my heart was never meant to beat in isolation.

Some of us here on Earth feel alien, like we don’t really belong to any place, country, race, or tribe, but beyond the artificial and sometimes superficial boundaries of nations and cultural identity, there exists a deeper sense of belonging that one can experience — and that is when two or more hearts recognize each other. This belonging is transcendental in nature. It lives in those precious moments when two Souls say to one another ‘You are mine to care for, and I am yours. We belong to each other.’

It’s when someone chooses to hold space for our entire complex being, to weave their story with ours, that they gift us with something more precious than any passport, nation or cultural identity could ever offer us - they give us a home in their hearts. And this is the purest form of belonging I’ve found: to truly be cherished, claimed, and held in the embrace of another's unconditional love, forever.

This, is the sacred Yes.

And this is love's deepest mystery and most sacred power: not that it makes us perfect or even demands perfection of us, but that it reminds us that our true belonging and salvation is to be found in each other, not in any place or thing, but in each other. And in our hearts we know this. We know that without this brave willingness to commit to a journey of embracing the beautiful mess of being human together, and growing together, without this sacred Yes, to which all other yes are but child’s play, we stand forever alone, bereft and comfortless, in our sterile prisons of perfectionism.

Because it is precisely in the muck and the mud of our humanity, in the raw and difficult spaces of loving oneself and another, that we find our deepest connection and belonging. And in a world growing increasingly more intolerant of human nature with its relentless pursuit of perfection, this sacred 'yes' becomes more than just acceptance – it becomes our very lifeline, our way back to each other and back to our sacred humanity.

And if as a species we can learn how to honor our shared humanity with reverence, we will have have learned an essential truth: that in our shared imperfections blooms our deepest beauty, that in our mutual acceptance and understanding of one another dwells our truest power, and finally, that the most profound meaning one can find for their existence, isn’t merely to be found in our own individual journeys, but perhaps even more, in the delicate dance of souls learning what it means to love and be loved.

Uploaded on February 19, 2025