WHAT THEY DIDN’T TEACH US AT SCHOOL

​I wish they had told us that love wasn’t about “happy every after”, that love wasn’t about creating happiness for one’s self; in fact that love was an invitation for that very self to dissolve, to dissolve into something greater than individuality.
I wish they’d explained that upon falling in love, all those parts of self that are in resistance to dissolving will come up; that they will most likely appear in the form of projections onto the other. If only they’d told us to be watchful of whenever we move into judgement of our beloved…that those are the times when we could actually trace the thoughts to the feelings, and our feelings to the roots, and recover a piece of our self that has been blocking love. Why did they not tell us this?
And why did they not show us how to hold space for these resistances, for these patterns…how to hold them like a child to our heart, to be present to them and hold them until they too can dissolve into love?
And why not show us how we can do this for ourselves, and how we can do this for another.
Why did they give the impression that love is a passive experience, something that just happens to you, that you just fall in love and there’s nothing you have to do. Did they want us to be forever searching for that perfect love, throwing away everything else as soon as some difficulty arose? Why did they not tell us that love is delicate, it is fragile, and precious, and takes our full intention to nurture and to treasure it? No-one told us that we have to dedicate ourselves to love, so that in the dark hours when we cannot feel its presence, we have enough faith to find our way back.
Why did they not show us how to support our friends through love? Why did no one show us the difference between supporting a friend’s story and supporting a friend’s love? Somehow instead of learning to support love we all learned to take sides; to sympathize with our friends as they complain about their relationships, about their beloveds…we agree with them, we begin to hate their partner too on behalf of our friends…why were we shown that? Instead of hearing our friends out, listening to their stories with pure presence and loving compassion, and waiting until the story has felt heard, and love can return once more. Why didn’t anyone show us how to do this?
Why is it that the TV, the books and magazines all full of me me me…what will I get out of love, what will I get out of relationship, what will I get out of marriage? Why aren’t they explaining that love is the one place we can lose the me, lose the I, and fall into the Mystery? The idea of offering ourselves in service of Love, in service of the divine, is completely alien to our mainstream thinking. This leaves us forever searching for self fulfilment in love, and missing the glorious opportunity to truly know love.
Why didn’t they teach us that at school?