Sharing time

Right in the middle of working on a new book, struggling to distinguish between fiction and reality, I’ve met a beautiful woman and fell in love. A day spent together on the beach was all it took to restore my faith that falling in love is actually possible.

Unfortunately, only one week later I was dumped. A wave of disappointment rolled over me and I thought it was just not fair. To make matters worse, I had started writing a little love song which I really liked and now I saw the new melody drowning in the deep sea of failed summer romances. But then I started wondering, ‘why do I feel like this?’ Why couldn’t I be simply grateful for the beautiful moments we had shared? Letting them be what they were: unique fragments of time that had made me really happy.

So while being dumped has caused some temporary pain to my ego, the amazing day on the beach has kept its beauty; even though my longing heart was hoping for another dose of love, the experience itself didn’t actually need any repetition – it was already complete just as it was!

So on the same day that I was dumped, I finished the song.

Soon after a friend came to visit and I met his partner, Jamie. Almost instantly, Jamie and I became really good friends. We laughed and cried over broken dreams and future hopes, and we played music – lots of it! Then, after a few days, my new friend left and I got a similar sensation as before: all of a sudden, a series of beautiful moments had ended and there was nothing I could do about it. Gone!

Two women in two weeks – with both I had a very different yet equally amazing time. The fact that both experiences are over is still making me a little sad, but the dominant feeling is one of gratitude. I feel blessed for having so many opportunities to live through beautiful moments with others. And the thing is: if moments never ended, how could we ever experience new ones? As Ben Harper says, ‘there are so many special people in the world’ – all out there, waiting to be met!

The night before she left, Jamie and I played the song that I had written about my summer romance. It’s an example of what we’re doing here on Earth: Sharing time!

PS: I love chocolate too!