I try to lace my work with optimism because a guiding principle in my own life has been that the most tragic things in our lives almost always precede the most incredible. I think that, at any given point, we are faced with the choice of whether to move on with what the universe gives and takes or to hold on and bury ourselves in our own misery. I do not perch on a high horse preaching this, because I have been in those depths, and I know what it’s like. I also know that there are few issues that will destroy you faster than matters of the heart. But what I must tell you is that while teaching myself to climb out of that sadness and attachment-laden-misery, I realized something that is a bit more realistic than optimistic, but so invariably true that it’s worth giving attention to.

When someone loves you, you will know it. If someone cares about you, they will find a way to be with you. If they do not, they’ll make excuses. Sometimes they won’t even be sure whether or not they love you, so you’ll see them going back and forth trying to figure it out. Love is not something that requires brain work. It is not a riddle to be solved or a mystery to be uncovered. It just simply is, and we just have to let it be, or not be, naturally.

I generally believe that people differ so much in their experiences and that no two situations are exactly the same, so it’s difficult to generalize something about love and romance, but I make an exception for this. I know many of you are probably reading this conjuring up all the reasons why so-and-so did in fact love you but they just couldn’t be with you for this reason or that reason and why that was so valid and why I have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s okay if you want to think that, I won’t stop you. But the truth is that what you’re holding onto is someone who doesn’t love you enough to put you first and make it work. And if I believe in anything, I believe that we all deserve to be with someone who wants to be with us as well.

So what we have to learn to do is to accept the love we aren’t given. To realize that although we put someone on a pedestal, that does not mean that their judgment determines us. It’s simply a mindset, one that we have to change if we want to get out. People can love you a little bit, and they can love you enough but not enough to make it work. It is not an all-or-nothing situation. We have to stop thinking that it is, and that when the cards don’t fall in our favor, that it defines some part of us as being unworthy and unlovable. Because to combat that idea, we hold on as fiercely as we can to the reasons we are loved, until letting go is our idea– not theirs.

But we all end up, one way or another, okay. We’re all on different rides, but they all end the same way. You do not need somebody else’s love to be whole. You do not need their permission to go on with your life. What you do need is your own love. You need to let yourself go on. Their love isn’t stopping you, because that love doesn’t exist. It is only you who is holding onto what you believe should be. And what you will realize, sooner or later, is that most of your life is defined and chosen by what you compel yourself to believe should or shouldn’t be. Release yourself from the cage you built. You hold the key to your own freedom.