First Love, One Love

by Adele Leung

If there is one thing I learned from the Universe, it is to listen to its murmurs and see the significance.

I had an inseparable friend in college, we met in the year when I listened to my heart and made a decision to switch my science major to an all arts degree, majoring in Chinese Studies. If you have ever met anyone in life for the first time, and knew you were destined to be best friends, you will understand  the connection between Yen and I.  She was definitely the yang, and I, the yin, when we met.  We loved the same things, especially pretty things like fashion, we were in the same classes, our favorite was the study of Chuang Tzu.  We partied together, got drunk on Sex on the Beach, we danced and danced at night and fully immersed ourselves in our Chinese Philosophy studies by day.  We were intensely in each other’s lives for one year. Then I moved to Vancouver from Toronto,  but our friendship ended before my departure.  It broke down during the final semester of our third year in college.  When I felt I finally discovered a friend, as much as I was heartbroken and lost from losing our connection, I had to continue alone.

I met several spiritual mentors during the time my soul was desperately seeking wholeness after a long period of not loving myself.  Under their facilitation and guidance, for the first time in my life, I felt who was the truth of myself, had a chance to emerge.  I was so ready to dive into all dimensions and the darkest depths.  I looked upon these mentors like family, brothers and sisters and wished we could be close.  Yet soon enough, all of them, moved away from where I lived.  Once again, just when I preciously discovered support, I found myself alone again.

I grew up in a religious family and an orthodox Christian all girls school.  I did not end up being a Christian nor a finance analyst, doctor, accountant or lawyer.  Because I choose to believe that an all loving-God would never allow only a selected few to enter his kingdom, and I treasure the freedom that existed beyond the imagination of authority.  Choosing as such, I relinquished the opportunity to walk into a room and feel a part of one.  For most of my life, I could only feel the one, as single, solitary.

I could choose to brush aside these experiences as the harshness of growing up which everyone somehow experience one way or another.  Or I could acknowledge the deep heart break that they have allowed me to feel.  Feeling as deeply as I could possible, the vision clears as the lesson arises from my blurred tears.

I have come to this life knowing there is another awaiting me, who understands and accepts me as much as I love myself .  I have known with my first breath that what can be created in union is unimaginable in the scope of one.  Yet time and time again, I have been shown there is yet a first step.  I have to first know how to love myself and experience the immense magnitude of this first love.  A union can only be true, when it is utmost harmony experienced with one and in togetherness.  Unity can only arise from a union that is true.

We are our own masters.  We are our best friends.  We are our greatest support.  We are one with ourselves before any union with another is possible.  And this union will open into what is of a true tribe, one that does not exclude, a people that gravitate together not because of emptiness or co-dependency, but because of a collaboration that is collective, one such that builds for one and all.  From the first love of oneself, we open and blossom into one love for all.

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