All people have essential needs that need to be fulfilled in their lives to be able to feel happy. Physiological needs, Safety needs, Need to belong and being loved and excepted, Affiliation needs (need for social relationships), Self-esteem needs (need to feel positive about ourselves), Epistemic needs (need to understand), and Self-actualization needs.
I have all my needs met until certain degree. However, I cannot stop but keep longing for a partner. Whatever mindfulness practice I try to put to work, this longing stays. Itױs in my every cell.
Her in Tel Aviv I am being reminded of this longing all the time. Cause here the fashion number one is to get married. Every 100 meters you see brides and grooms having their photo taken. Along the boulevard there are 101 places where they are celebrating their wedding parties. And everywhere there are gorgeous guys playing with their children, caring for them showing them there love and affection.
My longing keeps me having a deep intense feeling of hope. However I also have a very strong intuition that this is not my year to meet any one, or at least not something of serious intention. Patience is a virtue. It is challenging and giving me a playground for more mindfulness expansion.
It is a way of letting go of trying to hard to get it out of my system. For it will stay here as long as my need will not be met. It is as if you are hungry, but there are no foods around that will still your hunger. The only thing you can do is having peace with the feeling of being hungry, or in my case with the longing for a partner.
This making of peace is not too hard I found out, cause there is no real need to have or be with a partner. The wanting comes out of a desire to want to experience being in a relationship to share moments with someone you are romantically involved in. To have some one close to you mirroring your ways of being, giving you opportunities to expand and learn more about yourself.
The process about realizing that I have this longing for a relationship in me brings me new experiences as well. Old patterns get triggered, old patterns are being looked at and let go off. I guess this is part of having my longings be fulfilled.
As Constantine Cavafy puts it beautifully in a poem;
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the journey is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
may there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbours seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey.
without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
-- Constantine Cavafy--
