I had a second chance.
A chance I didn’t expect to have in this lifetime, let alone now.
I was part of my brother’s life for almost three months.
I wasn’t a part of his since youth, when living under the same roof.
Then, either too dumb or caught up in my adaptive self to appreciate the moments, to nourish him. I cared, I loved him, but love is never any better than the lover.
Only wish I were present enough, so that I could embrace the moments. Making sure the moments were not tainted by what I can control.
Blinded by my adaptive self, I missed those moments, lagging behind, tainting moments and the relationships within. It hurts, as the relationships didn’t emerge from me. Don’t resonate me. Don’t resonate with me. My relationships in dissonance with who I am. Suffering.
Thus, as long as I am caught up in my adaptive self, I'll be a shadow of my Self. I will always lag behind, no agency, all will be suffering. All will be lived as suffering. I will be suffering. Affording only but suffering, the way I love will be suffering.
Love is never any better than the lover.
It is thus our duty to be better beings, individuate so that our interactions, expressions better the community—so we can love better.
To love my brother better, I had to be better. Hence a life of cultivation. But cultivation doesn’t make you better. It affords you to move better, affording you to interact better, to relate better. The way I relate to ‘what-is-not-me’ defines who I am. A dance.
Things are not defined by what they are but by how they interact, how they are being interacted with. Thus, I am not defined by my adaptive self, but by how I choose to interact. Co-defined by what I am affording through the interaction, the relationship, with ‘what-is-not-me’. The quality of that relationship is the ceiling of the quality of my relationship to other beings. The ceiling of my ability to love.
Cultivating thus not a ‘what’ but a ‘how’, how I interact. It is not about changing what I am, what my shape is. As what I live as bliss or suffering is dictated by the ‘how’, not by what the ‘how’ is relating. Bliss, the absence of stress, of suffering, is a ‘how’. A balancing act.
The potential of falling into suffering is always there. Mitigated by presence and participating, daring to walk on that tightrope. There is a myriad of ways to live suffering. One to live bliss. Walking on the tightrope. The ‘how’, the only thing I can control.
Nothing is immune from suffering. All can be suffering. Cultivating how we relate gives us agency over suffering. Agency on how living is experienced, agency to not be suffering, agency to be better, affording bliss. A choice.
To be better at the balancing act, I must choose to live every moment. Crafting. Individuating. Dancing with ‘what-is-not-me’. Every frame of consciousness, every moment that consciously goes through your awareness, is an opportunity to interact, to dance. The friction of the dance, its resistance, warms me, smoothens me, makes me more and more malleable, so that my shape can move better.
The opportunities to be better are not infinite. The frames are diluted with time. Less and less, as we cement ourselves in our adaptive self. A shape in 'rigor antemortis'. Missing out moments because we’re not ready to live, them. Life happens, whether you are participating or not.
I am grateful I was able to make better choices, affording to be more crafted, so that I can get closer to love my brother the way I long to. But to love him better, to change how we relate, our relationship, I must interact with him. Be part of his life.
I thus yearned for a second chance.
We all yearn for second chances, yet we take them for granted if we think there’s a third. An illusion, soothing our inability to change, inability to move. Or is it fatality, not believing there is a second, let alone a third, that coerces us into being better? If so, we are not better, as we only behave as such if chaperoned by fatality. When we know there’s a third and make sure don’t miss the second, then we are ready, we are better, crafted—our shape moves.
Only then can we make use of a second chance.
A second chance I didn’t expect to have in this lifetime, let alone now.
A second chance to love him better.
I am not sure if this is the best I’ll ever do, but that is undoubtedly better than 'how' I ever did.
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