“Everyone needs love. Without love, we cannot continue, so don’t discriminate against yourself. You need love. Everyone needs love. Everyone deserves love.” Thich Nhat Hanh

These words startled me when I heard them inserted between chimes and chants in the fifty-five-minute meditation, Walk with Me in Sound. I mean, I know everyone deserves love, but do we really NEED love?

There are many kinds of love, of course. There is love for our community, friends, family, parents and children. Somehow, I heard these words in the context of romantic love and have been contemplating the idea ever since.

For the last few years, I have assumed that I am beyond romantic love. Beyond, not above, this isn’t a judgment of others. I have had several treasured romantic relationships that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Yet now, I cherish my time and value solitude. I adore spending time with my kids and family. I have a couple of close friends. I work a lot. There isn’t much extra time so moving through the world solo seems appropriate.

Working with my friend Cat, a gifted Reiki practitioner, I learned that my ability to receive is out of harmony with my ability to give. This was a strange realization as I spend so much time studying, practicing and attempting to find and maintain equilibrium. Daoism and Acupuncture are all about balance. Yin & Yang. Cat has reminded me to learn to receive.

These experiences came together serendipitously. A final gift was a meditation led by Todd Fink during our last Kind Mind meeting of 2021. “Breath in. Breath out. Breath in and say ‘receiving,’ breath out and say ‘giving.’” After meditating for nearly a decade, I never thought of the breath as an example of striking balance between giving and receiving. I was stunned and surprised that I was stunned as it was so obvious. One can’t exhale without inhaling. Is giving sustainable without receiving?

I have been thinking about this for almost two weeks now. I love ideas like this and am left with more questions than answers. The questions are interesting to me. Is there anyone else that is single and continues to actively choose that status? Do we NEED romantic love? What do you think? I wonder.

My blog, Wandering Thoughts, is a place for these ideas. This particular thought just happens to wander deeper into the brush than most.