“We are not born fluent in love but spend our life learning about it. Its energy is pure power. We are as attracted to love as we are intimidated by it. We are motivated by love, controlled by it, healed by it, and destroyed by it. Love is the fuel of our physical and spiritual bodies. Each of life’s challenges is a lesson in some aspect of love. How we respond to these challenges is recorded within our cell tissues. We live within the biological consequences of our
biographical choices.”
Caroline Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit
We often speak of love as something we either have or don’t, something we fall into or out of. Yet few of us pause long enough to consider its deeper purpose. What if love is not the destination, but the lesson itself?
Imagine a world where this passage wasn’t treated as a rule, but as an understanding —a truth we live by and feel woven through everything we do. It begins to explain all experience: every joy, every disappointment, every connection and ending. Through love, we learn how to trust, how to surrender, and how to let life teach us what it means to be human.
Seeing Others, Seeing Ourselves
Bring someone to mind, anyone. Think about something they do that fills them with love, and then something they do to protect themselves. It might be the same person, or several.
Notice how easily we can see the patterns in others. How obvious it becomes that each action has an underlying motivator: the desire to feel safe, to be seen, to belong. It makes sense then, doesn’t it, that someone might hold themselves back to avoid disappointment, or pull away when asked to open up. You might also notice how they light up when they speak of what brings them joy, which is love in its most natural form.
We’ve made our existence so complicated that we’ve forgotten how simple it can be. Beneath the layers of distraction and accumulation, everything we do is either an expression of love or a protection against the fear of losing it.
Turning Inward
It’s easy to recognise these patterns in others, but harder to find them in ourselves. When asked to look inward, most of us jump straight to flaws and faults, missed opportunities or old regrets. This isn’t self-awareness, it’s conditioning. We’ve been taught to believe we have little control over our environment or our emotions, that introspection is indulgent or uncomfortable.
But awareness is where healing begins. Most of us have the time, even if it’s just the space between moments, to read, journal, or ask ourselves difficult questions. The challenge isn’t asking; it’s answering honestly.
Who am I?
What do I want?
For a long time, I couldn’t answer either. I had been living as a lifelong understudy, waiting for permission to step into my own light. I blinked, and a decade had passed, lost in the shadows of who I thought I was meant to be.
It wasn’t until I stripped away the labels: the job titles, the roles, the expectations, that I found what lay underneath: fear, uncertainty, and a quiet voice reminding me that I was enough all along. Now I write, hold space, create, and invite others to ask themselves the same questions I avoided for so long.
Trusting the Body, Trusting Life
Through yoga, I have found a framework for this remembering. The practice teaches us to meet ourselves as we are, to inhabit our bodies, our breath, and our minds with gentleness. Each pose becomes a mirror for the inner landscape: a chance to witness our resistance, our effort, and our ease.
On the days we can’t move as we did yesterday, humility steps in. On the days the breath flows freely, gratitude takes its place. Yoga teaches us to trust the body, the moment, and ultimately, life itself.
Faith in Many Forms
I’ve always been fascinated by religion and its stories. Although I don’t consider myself religious, I understand its power. Religion offers a framework, a language of meaning, a community, and a sense of safety for those seeking to understand life’s mysteries.
In our modern world, we have numerous ways to explore the same terrain, including therapy, yoga, prayer, family, art, and nature. None is more or less spiritual than another. Each is a doorway to self-understanding and to trust.
Recently, I reconnected with a family acquaintance who had rediscovered his faith, a born-again Christian, deeply devoted and at peace. His faith has given him a way to navigate life without the burden of needing to know everything. His trust in the unseen is unwavering. And truthfully, he’s the happiest person I’ve met in years.
What he found through faith is what many of us find through practice: resonance, surrender, and love.
The Art of Surrender
Resistance to life, to the way things unfold, often shows up as our need to control. We try to plan, predict, and manage every outcome, hoping to secure a sense of safety. Yet deep down, we know that very little is truly within our control.
When we find a framework that allows us to see this, whether through yoga, faith, or reflection, the resistance begins to soften. Trust becomes possible.
Perhaps the silent lesson woven into it all is: Every heartbreak, every surrender, every moment of letting go, is love asking us again and again, “Do you trust me yet?”
