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“I guess I don’t even think about being single. I just lived my life and made choices along the way. I didn’t say, ‘This is what it’s going to be in 20 years or 10 years or five years.’ Unexpected things will happen and change the course of your life. That’s when you a make decision for yourself and not feel like you futurized too much and disappointed yourself. I never really zoom out enough to think, Oh, I did things differently. It’s only when somebody tells you [that] you did things differently and then I realize, Oh, I guess I did.” —Lucy Liu, January 2025, WSJ, ‘My Monday Morning’ column
Being.
The state of ‘being’ is an active state. A state of wholly being in the present moment, but by no means stuck or bound and most definitely not forced upon us. ‘Being’ is something we choose. Whether that is to be calm, be kind, be engaged, be honest, be loving, we choose how we reside in the everydays of our life.
Isabella Rossellini, aged 72, shared how she unexpectedly found the ‘serenity of being single’ and has been savoring it for decades. Yet again the words chosen by a culture to describe a state of existence reveal more about the culture’s values than the actual properties of that state, by which I mean, single does not reflect the truth of one’s life connections and company. If you have peeked at all at Rossellini’s popular Instagram account, you know that her life and interests abound with company of all types – people, animals, plants, etc. As she reminds in the quote below, she isn’t alone being ‘unpartnered’. That is a misconception that gets perpetuated to draw a division that need not exist.
“‘I think that’s just how life panned out [being happily unpartnered for 25 years]. I had children and it was difficult to have a relationship with a man who was not the father. And I started thinking, OK, I’ll take care of the children and then when they’re grown up, I’ll be available for a partner. But then I found, I have to say, the great serenity of being single.’ She paused, as if to savour the words. ‘And if I hadn’t, I don’t think I would have been able to do all that I’ve done. I have freedom of movement.’
‘Maybe if I’d found somebody and fallen in love, but I didn’t look for a partner just to not be alone, because I wasn’t alone. When you’re with somebody, you become very vulnerable to the ups and downs of the other person. So I was able to keep an evenness and a concentration that allowed me to study, to get a master’s degree in my 50s. I could just zero in on what I had wanted to do when I was 14.’”
—Award-winning actor Isabella Rossellini shared in a recent interview with The Guardian when asked if she made a conscious decision to remain single
With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, an annual holiday to celebrate love, those we love in all its different relationship forms, it can be helpful to be reminded that love doesn’t have a hierarchy. One type of relationship be it a friendship, a spouse, a parent/child, a pet companion, a universal love for humanity, self-love – isn’t more or less important, but merely other avenues of giving and receiving love. Love, when it is true, comes in a variety of forms. Shared in this post back in October about unconditional love, Andy Puddicombe reminds, “The very definition of unconditional love is it is not dependent on anything or anyone. So to experience unconditional love, we don’t necessarily need to be with another person. It doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy being with another person, but we don’t necessarily need them to experience it.” Zen Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh wrote in his bookHow to Love, “In true love, you attain freedom.” He goes on to teach us that “To love is to recognize; to be loved is to be recognized by the other.”
In my own life, one that the zeitgeist would label as ‘being single’, I have let go of the narrow perspective of how to welcome love into my life as well as give love to the world. Once I began to do this with more awareness and understanding, I began to feel more love and also be more loving without expectation to others and to myself in how I nurtured my everyday life and supported my dreams. I set myself free to trust my life journey, and it has made a powerfully positive difference to the quality of my life. But, and this is why I share today’s episode/post, this is not to advocate for being single or to enjoy being single until . . . [whatever it is the culture we find ourselves approves or applauds].
When we let ourselves be labeled in such a way – married, single, divorced, widowed – it becomes cement that prevents us to live fully and partake in whatever life dance we choose to attend, for however long we choose to partake. Because the reasons for choosing the life we discover is most nourishing for our true selves will be unique to each of us, and cannot be fully understood by the outside world, not even those close to us in absolute entirety.
As I have shared in the past, the forcing and trying to control anything to happen beyond what life’s experience was offering me was my following bad advice and accepting poor guidance of how to live a fulfilling life. I know better now, and I am more loving and more at peace now as well. In the past whether I was in a romantic relationship or out of one (in my twenties and thirties), peace wasn’t something I truly experienced compared to what I know true peace to be. It was not the fault of the relationship I was in nor the state of being single that caused this lack, but rather an ignorance of what love was that caused the discontent.
If we are living a life of contentment, and based on the quotes shared by both Lucy Liu and Isabella Rossellini, I would argue both women who happen to be single by society’s definition, are living deeply contented lives, then we dance with life, savoring it deeply, and in so doing, our life if full of love in many different forms.
Understanding what a life of love is and how it is invited into our life:
Kindness given freely without expectation
“We are humans and have empathy built into our brain structure, when we are touched by what we encounter—and when our minds are balanced—we respond with benevolence. With friendliness or compassion or appreciation. It’s a beautiful truth about the potential of human beings.” —Sylvia Boorstein, Ph.D, author Happiness is an Inside Job
When we are at peace within ourselves, know our own mind and how to care for it well, and strengthen our awareness through mindfulness practices, we no longer hold back our natural inclination to be kind out of fear of being hurt or taken advantage of. This also includes being kind to ourselves. And because we are engaging freely, we want nothing in return. We give because we know what we can healthily give. We know our boundaries. We know why we are giving and it comes from a place of being loving.
Building a strong ‘root system’
“The roots of a lasting relationship are mindfulness, deep listening and loving speech and a strong community to support you.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
Whether in our personal life with our friends, family and community, or in our romantic partnership, we often only realize how strong our root system is, thus how true the love is, when a strong emotional upheaval or catastrophic event occurs. But we can never know if or when or what that will be, so we build that because it shows us how and with whom to build connections with.
As we build our ‘root system’ of love, we discover truths about the people we engage with. It is during this journey that we, being the mindful and aware person that we are who respects ourselves and our boundaries of what we need, that we choose to either continue to build relationships with certain people or to step back and open our lives up in a different direction or for different connections.
Studies have shown (shared in episode #254) that in America, singles tend to have a stronger social web of connections than those who are married. Due to a variety of factors, responsibilities, and types of support structures (or lack thereof when it comes to childcare and transportation especially for married people with young children), those who are single tend to invest in a vast array of relationships and continue to invest in them rather than drill down on just one or two different relationships that hold the bulk of the weight for social connection. This is to the benefit of the singletons, but it need not be only for those who aren’t traditionally married. As was shared in this episode (#274) about the importance of friendships, quality friendship is vital to a quality life regardless of one’s relationship status as defined by tax filing descriptions.
Being loving, starts with healing and loving yourself first
“You can’t offer happiness until you have it for yourself. So build a home inside by accepting yourself and learning to love and heal yourself.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
The essence of loving kindness is being able to offer happiness, but if we are attempting to offer love to another without loving ourselves, then our ability to be truly loving cannot happen. And so then the question must be asked, how can I be loving to myself?
I cannot answer that questions concretely for you because you are a unique individual, and anyone who tells you specifically how to be loving to yourself is misguided in doing so for only you will know what you need to feel nourished.
Just as society often tells us we must be coupled to be whole, that is misguided for we already are whole on our own, and what I might need in my life to feel nourished may require me to not be compatible with another person who I love, and so a romantic partnership may not be possible with that person, but that doesn’t mean I cannot have a platonic relationship with them and love and support them in a different way that is truly loving to both them and myself.
Find your dharma and live it
“Use your talent to find ways to bring happiness to yourself and others—the happiness that arises from meditation is not the same as the feeling that comes from the pursuit of pleasure seeking. Meditative joy has the capacity to nourish our mindfulness, understanding, and love. Live in a way that encourages deep happiness in yourself and others.” —Thich Nhat Hanh
Throughout the Contentment Masterclass, the concept of dharma is taught, explored and shown how to be maintained. A quick overview is that dharma is what we can uniquely give with our innate talents and passion to the world that both constructively benefits the world while simultaneously nourishing and energizing us. It takes time to figure out what our dharma is, and each person’s road to discovering it will be unique to them based on when their consciousness awakes (or if it awakens), but when we discover our dharma and begin to live it each day, we quickly realize that love is not a narrow construct that often is portrayed in contemporary media. What we have shared here on the blog, as taught by Jay Shetty is that it is however often the definition of love by societal terms that is needed to teach us how to discover our true selves with the potential of unearthing our dharma and how to be truly loving because that is often the only motivator that will prompt us to change or wake up to the vast awesomeness of a truly fulfilling and love-filled life.
Each person’s life journey will be unique, but we so often are encouraged to travel life in the same manner, speed, route and direction as well as with the same company or travel companions, that we miss the beautiful scenery and experiences and essentially, the opportunities, that can be part of our book of life if only we would have tuned in to our inner compass.
Choose today to engage with life right now without ‘futurizing’ it as Lucy Liu described. There is serenity to be savored. If we do this, if we live fully in the present moment, acknowledge where we can grow and what skills we can learn to be truly loving, not only will we discover our dharma which will be deeply fulfilling for all of our days that we are engaged with it, but we will also cross paths with people that prompt love to be felt and exchanged truly and sincerely in all its many different forms.
Wishing you a wonderful month, year and each day along the way full of savoring the serenity of being single, or in other words being fully alive in your everyday life.
