Fly

There are sentences we do not understand when we are young. Only later, after life has sobered us a few times. For a long time, I believed that to love someone meant drawing closer to them. Asking for more of their time, collecting more shared memories, believing that two lives would eventually find the same path. It is a natural thought. Perhaps that is why letting go is so difficult.

Then, one day, we realize that not every encounter has the same purpose. Some people enter our lives not to stay forever. One brings an idea. Another leaves us with a question. And some depart while quietly changing something within us forever. Sometimes a single person is enough to make us think differently about love. Not because they fulfill our desires, but because they teach us that love is not always about fulfillment.

Because our feelings do not always obey reality. The heart longs to move closer even when the mind already knows the path leads elsewhere. Many people hope that time will solve it. That distance or silence will eventually cool what has grown too warm. I no longer believe it happens on its own. Feelings do not simply fade. We are the ones who cool them. Slowly. Patiently. Sometimes painfully. Not because we want to feel less, but because we do not want our love to become a burden to the one we love.

Perhaps this is the hardest work of all, the kind no one ever sees. It is not surrender that hurts the most, but the quiet discipline of everyday life. Reminding ourselves, again and again, that not every longing is meant to be fulfilled. There is a kind of love whose dignity lies precisely in its refusal to possess. A love willing to step back before casting a shadow over another person's freedom. It is a strange feeling, as though we are not saying goodbye to someone else, but to a part of our own hopes. And yet, nothing essential is truly lost. What remains may be quieter, but it is also purer than what came before.

Today I believe that love is not measured by how tightly we can hold on to someone. It is measured by whether we can sincerely rejoice in the direction they are taking, even when that path no longer runs beside our own. If someone asked me what it really means to love, I would not answer with a grand declaration.

I would simply say this: there comes a time when you no longer wish to fly beside the other person. You only wish that you will never become the weight upon their wings.