Valerie Roney

Went into my meditation today all nervous and jittery. With all those feeling of twitterpation and trepidation you get when you’re falling in love.

Love puzzles me… no that’s not quite true, dating – and that whole form of love puzzles me.

When I did the last big 100 day project, it cracked me wide open to love – in an infinite and rather overwhelming sense. I spent a lot of time getting used to moving around in love all the time. Hard to make dating choices from that space, when you’re already in love – and by that I mean it more like in the hot tub, completely immersed with all of that churning and bubbling all around you.

For the longest time I wondered why I wasn’t dating any of these wonderful, beautiful, endearing men in my life. Love’s infinite, love’s unconditional, does it really matter who you date? Except I think it does. For all the men I enjoy and admire and hold deep in my heart, I still once in while meet a fella who leaves me walking away grinning like an idiot thinking Damn! – and not much else (it takes a lot to leave me speechless). I can’t even rationally explain what makes that difference (and certainly there’s nothing love does to present itself as a rational thing).

The best I can come up with is when I’m out adventuring in some park, wandering pathway to pathway, some trails I pass by, others utterly engage me. And I seem to be at my most joyous when I find the path that takes to the challenging and unexpected places – emerging breathless with twigs in my hair, burrs in my pants, and mud up to my ankles. So maybe that’s part of it, it’s not just that any trail/relationship is good and will take you places, but to find something I’m dead curious about – seeking the challenge, curious about how I will grow and evolve from the adventure? And that’s something I don’t come across very often.

And interstingly (read FRUSTRATINGLY!) when I do come across those openings, there seems to be some reason I can’t go there – be it emotional, geographical, circumstantial. That’s a big part of what is driving this current 100 day project, recognising this relationship struggle is just a microsystem of an overarching theme in my life right now. One of encountering the intriguing, the inspiring, the places I want to go – and yet somehow always just out of reach. A bounding puppy on a short leash – the tension between enthusiasm and limitation in that makes me nuts.

A good portion of what is driving this current project, is the frustration of that short leash. I’m now taking the time to settle a bit and have a look at it, instead of always thrusting and pulling at. For once, I don’t think this is about arguing with reality, wanting things to be other that what they are; but more trying to open to that bounding, loving part of myself…and find a way to set it free. Because I’m miserable without it.