New Love – A Rebirth? Not Necessarily
People typically think and categorize new love as a new beginning or a new start. We call it a clean slate. It’s the moments where we have escaped the grip of past relationships in order to make room for someone new. We expect a fresh start and speak of it as a renewal. It’s like magic, that new intimacy swoops in and undoes the feelings that we previously carried. And I am all for it. Love often feels like a rebirth as it opens us back up and makes us vulnerable again. It further reminds of us of a world of endless possibilities.
Just as easy as love swooping in to bring back what we thought we had lost in past relationships, it also reflects back to our previous selves, the person we used to be. In early moments of romantic connections, it’s far too easy to believe we are becoming something or someone else entirely different. It’s the excitement we feel. It’s the fresh set of attention we receive. It’s hope that we can be transformed. Despite these feelings and others like it, beneath them older patterns begin to resurface. Sometimes we regain the fears we carried or the long-lasting needs we kept inside. As soon as something we start to value begins to matter, we run back to the usual ways of self-preservation. New love doesn’t erase these parts nor does it erase the past. But new love does inevitably invite them back into our newly found well-being.
Finding new acquaintances and starting new relationships often reveal where we are still sensitive. For us, it displays the routines of old – how well we respond to being close to someone, how well we handle insecurity and indecision, or how fast we attach meaning (value) to being the one chosen. Many habits and traits we thought we had outgrown revisit, and questions we believed we had answered reappear. Understand, this is not to say that love has failed or is in the process of failing, it’s just that intimacy has a way of bringing truth to the surface. And it can lead to feelings of disappointment if we are expecting love to save us from whom we have recently become.
I can relate to this and understand through my own personal experiences. Though Kind Rebirths, there is a bit of a difference with this understanding. Love, in all of its grand significance and magnificence and pomp and circumstance, is not a cure. It is a mirror. It is a mirror that reflects the landscape of emotion with precision and clarity, even before we are poised to see it for ourselves. When that longing we feel arises, or the defensiveness we put up, or even the hesitation that starts to build up, it’s not because love is showing up incorrectly or that the love we are developing for someone else is wrong. They come back because love is honesty and it is meant to challenge who you are.
If we start to mistake new love for a rebirth, we are asking a lot from it. I mean, really, can we expect love to correct unprocessed grief, heal old wounds from past heartbreaks, or validate our worth? For when it doesn’t, we feel disillusioned. Learning to treat love at this stage as a mirror and reflection instead of a solution, we begin to feel the transformation begin. We start noticing who we are, where we are, and what we need to face and resolve.
When I talk about Kind Rebirths, especially with respect to love, I don’t ask that we try and become someone else. I want us to recognize who we already are especially when we are in the presence of someone new, someone that is beginning to matter. This is about witnessing our reactions and using compassion instead of judgment. Learning to stay present in the moment without the abandonment of self or of the connection itself.
New love is fantastic. It feels like that fresh start. But sometimes new love doesn’t mark the start of something brand new, it marks the very moment when we see who we are more clearly. Let that clarity be its own kind of rebirth as it challenges you to honesty. And within this context, don’t let Kind Rebirths hold you to the literal action (like changing what you say or what you do). In fact, it calls for you to rebirth your thoughts keeping you in the moment while remembering who you are: kind, compassionate, and considerate.
Stay mindful…
Rebirth
