Finding Yourself, Before Finding Someone For Yourself

“It is the feeling you get when you completely let go and allow yourself to belong to yourself for the first time. When you look in the mirror and it is just you. Your eyes finally just your eyes. Not the eyes which held them. Your skin finally just your skin. Their fingerprints nowhere to be found. You are the you before they came. The you that does not have grief resting in their belly. And mourning rotting on their tongue. You are stripped clean of everything that could not carry the way your heart demanded you to be carried. It is all you. Welcome back. You have been gone for such a while. It is all you. It has always been. Just you.”

These beautiful lines by Rupi Kaur, a Canadian writer and illustrator (all of 24), reminds us of the fact that before anything else, we must first belong to ourselves. Your journey to find someone for yourself, a soul-mate, a partner, regardless of what term you use, will be incomplete unless you first make the journey inwards – towards finding yourself.

Love, in its mystic and strange ways is quite an amorphous thing. It is ever so elusive and fleeting. If that is the case, how will we ever truly find ‘the one’? Well, it’s quite simple. Stop looking beyond yourself. Whoever you need, your love, is within you. You are that person. Our ideas of who we would like to seek out as partners, are usually based on what they would bring to us, to ‘complete’ us.

A relationship fostered on the feeling of lack is one that will never feel enough, no matter how hard both people try. Simply because, we have failed to look within. It is only when you look within yourself and recognize yourself for who you are, the true magic happens. It is only when you set out on the path of seeking true independence, to live for and with yourself, that you meet people who share similar journeys.

One Way Of Bringing The Two Paths Together Is This Simple Exercise.

Write down everything you desire in your partner. List out all the qualities and attributes as if you were making a checklist. Once you have done that, look at all the qualities you’ve listed. And become that person with all those qualities. One attribute at a time, one day at a time. And when you get there, voila! You’re your own person! You realize that you don’t even need to seek someone out. That someday, somewhere you’ll meet him. You doing your own thing. Him doing his own thing. When you both realize that you both could be doing the same thing better together, stronger. And that’s the real magic.

But for that to happen, you must first know how to belong to yourself, to be your own person. Fill yourself up – unconditionally.

Do things for yourself – unapologetically. Keep doing it until you realize there is no other way you could possibly be, nothing else you could possibly be doing.

Believe in everyday magic, believe in magic everyday – the shortcut? Believe in yourself. Before you realize, you will have fallen for yourself. And when you are in that state, you will meet people who are just as self-aware. Those friendships (if nothing else), will be worth preserving.