Someone asked me the other day, “What would the image of love look like to you?”

I guess I’ve never thought about the image of love. What that would look like…the colors, the shades, the shape of it. Most people would probably say it looks something like a heart. But not to me, not to this mind.

The image of love looks like a bird to me. This next sentence I’m about to write out is probably one of the closest things I will ever have held to my heart.

You must hold the people you love with open palms, so they are free to fly away from you, and in time, if it’s right, they will come back. 

I’ve had one very very very strange and yet amazing year. For the people who are just entering into my life, or who are just starting to get to know me, a lot has happened in this past year. I say strange and amazing because some of the things that have happened are completely beyond my comprehension and at the same time beyond coincidence. A trio of dreams last summer woke me up and shook me to my core and into tears of joy, I changed my body entirely and dove into my health, I started healing major parts of my life and I continue to be challenged, stretched, and for the first time ever feel like I am blooming. All of it climaxing in the past couple of weeks, which took a turn for the unexpected and then even more unexpectedly all snapped into place?

It has been a completely uncertain mess over this past year, and yet now when I look back on it all, I can see how designed that path really was.

The image of love was divulged to me in those dreams last year, and it really was given to me in that powerful sentence up above about open palms.

What I have started to learn, and these lessons are the hardest lessons of all, is that you have to love as deeply as you can and then you have to be willing to let that go as soon as you put it out there. This is not a small task. I don’t think this is a small task for anyone. But it’s the most fulfilling task that exists. To make this amazing journey and to deeply love what you are doing, people around you, and life…what an adventure that would be?! It’s the journey that I am part of right now…it’s a journey that I am enjoying (while tough as hell sometimes).

I guess you can add that realization to the mix as well – the one that I came to that said “everything you do should come from a place of light and love.” The decisions you make, the things you say to people, what you are doing with yourself etc. Of course I get trapped into old ways sometimes, but I can feel myself changing and warming even more than I was before. Not in a cheesy way…but I’m talking just being able to be here and really love what is going on. Traditionally speaking some of the things I’ve been going through are not the easiest, and while they can bring pain, I can make the decision to wrap them in love or hide.

I choose and have chosen the love route.

To be as straight as possible, I think the world we live in needs a whole lot more encouragement, love, and light. I plan on giving it.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project