"Giving myself up..."

On Friday afternoon I discovered the most beautiful poem/teaching by Osho:

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love.
It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not.

It is an existential truth:
only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love,
of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person -
without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other,
without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other.

They allow the other absolute freedom,
because they know that if the other leaves,
they will be as happy as they are now.
Their happiness cannot be taken by the other,
because it is not given by the other.

-Osho

I fell in love immediately. I shared it with a few people who I thought might appreciate it. I printed it and hung it on my refrigerator. It really spoke to me. It's how I think love should be. The idea of standing alone and being loved and being able to love and being happy independently of the other person.

One of my friends asked me if I knew of Mark Strand. I did not...he couldn't quite remember the poem that it reminded him of, but upon researching him for just a few moments this popped up:

Keeping Things Whole

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.

-Mark Strand

Amazing...such a sense of freedom and motion in both works...sigh...it's nice to know that the thought of being alone and happy and still being able to have a partner is not a foreign idea to everyone. It's very real and possible and I know that one day I will share a love like that with someone.