Let There Be Spaces in Your Togetherness #relationships

While as humans may fiercely love one other, sometimes we do it to the point similar to over watering a plant to eventually kill it.  Sometimes overprotective parents, overprotective spouses, husbands, wives, etc., can actually destroy a relationship by controlling every aspect of the other’s life.  In the end, the other cannot breathe, starts choking, gasping and dies both mentally, spiritually and eventually physically.

While we need to connect with each other as roots deeply grounded and secure, we also need to feel our senses of senses of uniqueness, individuality,  separateness, and independence.  As Kahlil Gibran beautifully said, “Let there be spaces in your togetherness….let the winds of Heaven dance between you.”

The beautiful mystical balance between connection and separateness is an integral part of growing in relationships and enables relationships to grow as fragrant gardens.  A parent has to give that to their child, a husband to his wife, and vice versa.  The more we hold on tightly, the more we hurt the other one and ourselves in the bargain. 

Being connected doesn’t mean thinking the same thoughts, doing the same things, and desiring the same things.  Connection does not mean merging, and individuality or separateness does not mean cutting out that person.  It just means giving the other person that space to be who they are designed to be without choking them and loving each other but letting the winds of Heaven dance between us.

I will end with Kahlil Gibran’s fantastic poem

Love one another, but make not a bond
of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other’s cup but drink not from
one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat
not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each
other’s keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain
your hearts.
And stand together yet not too near
together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow
not in each other’s shadow.

Kahlil Gibran

Rita