Forgive me if the December blog feels a little self-indulgent – it is, because this month I became Mrs Sarah Jayne Smetham!
I haven’t changed who I am; I have changed my name to match Brian’s – the wonderful man I have just married on 8th December.
Changing my name was a choice I wanted to make. I wanted to share Brian’s name; not because his name is more important, or because I should, or even because society wants me to. For me, it’s something I want to do as a symbol of our unity, our love and our oneness.
I have been musing about love more than usual lately and I’m sure it’s something I cannot describe, put into words, or even explain. Love is uniquely personal to each and every one of us, and yet it is the thing that runs through us all like a shared river. It is the underpinning of who we are.
It seems to me that we can’t explain love, because explanations and words arise from our intellect, from our mind. Attraction may arise from that place, however love dwells in a much deeper place. Humans have given different names to try to define different types of love, but I’m not sure this ‘classification’ of love gets us any nearer to what love is, because love is a feeling that is flowing and changing despite its constancy. We can’t pin it down to one description or a few words. I suspect if we asked 100 people in a room to describe love, we would get 100 different responses because as soon as we try to describe it, we take it from a deep feeling to an intellectual description again. Love is a universal language which neither has nor needs words.
Love can feel daunting, even frightening when we fear losing it or living without it, but love is what strengthens and supports our connections with others and within ourselves. In most of our relationships we get angry or frustrated and we can become temporarily disconnected from the feeling of love, but love doesn’t go away even when we can’t feel it; it is simply covered by other feelings in the moment. It becomes clouded by our thinking or buried beneath other emotions. It’s still there though, constant as ever.
I’m sure in our life together both Brian and I will continue to experience stormy times when love feels a little hidden or far away, but as long as we remember love’s perpetual presence, all we will need to do is wait awhile until the moments pass, thoughts shift, and love re-emerges.
With December love. Sarah x
