“We so badly want the people we love to get their spark back when it burns out, to become speedily found when they are lost. But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to the people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.”
– Author Heidi Priebe
Thanks to my long-time friend Radha Stern who shared this quote with me after I posted “The Sorrows and Joys of Midlife Divorce.” When Oren and I first met in an airport nearly 33 years ago, we were two strangers picking up different people on the same plane. But we ended up “picking up” each other. We built a tiny home in San Francisco, and Oren became the head of design for my boutique hotel company. We had two dogs and a cat. We also had one of those early Macintosh computers at home, and our password was “Love and Change.”
Sadly, in midlife, we drifted apart after 11 years and went our separate ways, with Oren moving to Los Angeles and then back to Israel (where he grew up). We had both changed too much to appreciate each other anymore. Fast forward to a few years ago, where after having been in relationships with others for extended periods, we were now single again and marveling at how much we both loved Baja.
Oren asked me if I wanted to find someone to grow old with. I smiled and said I was looking for someone to grow young with. Without missing a beat, Oren said, “Maybe you’re just looking for someone to grow with?” Touché. That’s when I realized that for as much as we had grown apart, Oren and I were now growing together again.
I’d never heard of Heidi Priebe before Radha shared this quote with me. Still, I’ve found her writing to perfectly capture the psychology of relationships, especially for those of us in midlife and beyond. Life is liminal. We’re often in between two things. Love is liminal as well. Without change, love is stagnant and confining. And, let’s face it, over the course of a lifetime with a long-time partner, we’re constantly changing.
Who knows, maybe we’re just meant to be enlightened witnesses for each other in our relationships? And, in that kind of relationship reciprocity, perhaps our job is to give ourselves (and others) the space to “evolve.” Ironically, the first four letters of evolve— evol—is love spelled backwards.
Maybe letting those around us change and evolve is the most profound love we can give.