Sunday, August 21, 2011

Karma and Common Sense

Photo by fabrizio
Soon after I got engaged a single girlfriend asked me, "Do you think finding love is because of karma?  That it was just your time?"

It made me think how complicated finding long term love - a partner for life - can seem.  It has become, for many women, the central source of drama in their lives.  (And by the way, I'm no different.  Although I wouldn't have admitted it before, and I may not even have realized it, before I met my husband I was in the same boat.)

This is the paradox.  I know so many women - attractive, good, kind, intelligent women - who haven't yet found someone that they would be enthusiastic about committing to and who would be enthusiastic about committing to them.  Yet it's something that many of these women deeply want.  Because there have been so many false starts, it has started to feel like some impossible dream.

I know people like to say that everything is a learning experience.  "Every failed relationship I had brought me closer to my true love," one woman told me.  That's a positive way to look at the past.  However I think it's possible to bypass future failed/short-term relationships, or at least to lessen the chance for them.  We need to use our heads.

Once I met my husband, the ways in which I had gone wrong before seemed so obvious.  Maybe it was partly my karma to meet my husband - it certainly felt magical to me - but I believe it was a change in my thinking that had happened in the months prior that had changed my approach to this area of my life and set the stage for it.  This is what I want to share.  It's not mystical, it's not philosophy, it's not even setting positive intentions for the future.  It's simply common sense for getting from A to B.  I didn't have it before, but I've got it now.