The Metaphysical Garden of our Souls
A meditation on love, loss and grief
Love is the single most transformative event of our lives.
When love arrives, it illuminates every mundane corner of your existance, transforming it into something extraordinary.
You used to think you were just muddling along in life, but now, you discover a grace underlying your every move. Your voice is enchanting, the way you comb your hair—divine. Even the way you cry is exquisite. Through their eyes, you fall in love with the body you inhabit, perhaps for the very first time in your life.
Your garden is bathed in a soft, perpetual evening glow and it's always magic hour.
New spaces unfold in your garden—places that had never existed before. The spot where you sip tea together, the garden where you strolled hand in hand, the unassuming little shop where you share gossip and updates over spicy noodle soup. Even your grocery runs take on a new significance, glowing in the warmth of shared companionship.
When love leaves, the once vibrant parts of your garden look dark and forlorn. The roses have wilted, the water fountains lie cracked and dry, the music you once enjoyed falls silent. A chill wind sweeps through your garden, scattering dry, dessicated leaves. Winter is here. Cold and shivering, you wonder if you’ll ever feel joy again.
Something draws your attention—a low whispering from the trees just beyond the familiar edges of your garden. The trees here are darker and older, the land wilder and denser; you realize you haven’t strolled these parts in ages.
But what if you dared to step into these shadowed depths? What secrets might the tangled roots and overgrown paths reveal?
The trees part, revealing a clearing. And there, hanging on a long, washing line—glimmering, iridescent, as fine as the wings of a dragonfly—are all the dreams you’ve dreamt from the moment you were born. Trembling in anticipation, you reach out to touch one of these. The dream shimmers and shifts, and suddenly, you feel that familiar swooping sensation in your stomach—and you’re back in a dream, riding a dragon. The dragon dove headfirst, your stomach soared and you woke up suddenly. Another dream flickers: you on a flying broomstick, soaring high above a strange landscape. A smile tugs at your lips as you remember all the thrilling adventures you’d had in that dream. The broomstick turned into a talking lady. You’d saved the city from mutant cows.
Some dreams are about the randomest things. One evening you spotted a frog in your garden, sheltering from the rain under a leaf. The frog gazed back at you, and in the strange halo cast by the lamplight, it appeared almost... intelligent. You’d met the frog in your dreams that night—both of you tipped your hats to each other (the frog was wearing a top hat), and then you went your separate ways.
As you sleep, your mind weaves together snippets of your life and imagination into stories for your amusement. Like your very own in-flight entertainment.
All around you, flitting about like thousands of golden dragonflies are your hopes and dreams - the kind you see when you’re awake. You know this, because one of these glittering objects has settled onto your shoulder. You feel a flicker of fire as it lands - a memory of your younger self, studying her lines for her character Lady Macbeth from Macbeth for the school play. You’d fallen in love with theatre and the nuances of dialogue and drama. The play you’d directed for the inter-school competition had earned many accolades that year. And then you stopped, because? You cannot remember.
The air is cool, and your eyes are closed as you relive and remember parts of your soul you didn’t even know you’d shed. The loss of your love had emptied you out, but now you feel somehow... less hollow.
We forget, but in our dreams we remember.
The Shrine of Grief is not too far away, a monument to all the things you lost, and everyone who left. You know it intimately, because you’ve spent the last few months here. You like to avoid it if you can.
The air whistles through the trees in mournful sighs, and the path to the shrine is littered with relics and memories from your past and present, each displayed on pedestals of stone. You pick up a little dropper from its stand. You’d used it to feed milk to the injured wild baby rabbit that you found by your house.
Despite your best efforts, it did not live. Holding the dropper now, you feel the same sharp pang you did the day you found your rabbit lying still and cold on its bed—the grief of losing something small and fragile under your care.
Your grandfather’s thick, reading spectacles. The cane he leaned on during the long walks he took with you—walks he felt strong enough to take whenever you came home. Memories of the last time you met someone before you parted ways - the last time you saw your friends depart from college, the last walk with your aunt, the last meal with your lover. You run your hands gently, over each object and memory, gently. Every memory bleeds you a little, opening fresh wounds in your heart.
To love is to grieve.
New routes have emerged from some of these objects and memories, leading deeper into your garden. You understand that these were the new connections you forged during your period of grief.
After a particularly soul-wrenching breakup, you’d tried watercolors and lost yourself in the colours and brushstrokes. You couldn’t get enough of painting skies, marvelling at how a little water and pigments could create such beauty. 'Guess the hues!' is now your favorite game—looking at the trees, you try to figure out which colors were mixed to create each shade. The world feels like a beautiful painting.
You took a trip to Jaipur after missing a promotion you’d worked hard for. The city captivated you with its unique architecture and winding lanes, and you made friends with an ease you’d never known before. Without realizing it, new flowers and landscapes were spreading across the barren spaces of your heart, overrunning the dusty, lifeless corners with bursts of color and life.
Every ending is a new beginning.
When felt in its full intensity, grief is the catalyst of all great change in the world. Ask the life-saving doctor who watched a loved one snatched away too soon. Or the lawyer who, having experienced discrimination firsthand, now fights for the poor and marginalised. Like a hot, burning fire, it scorches everything in its path, leaving only the essential at the core. In its flames, the soul is reborn.
As you look around at this great shrine to everything you have loved and lost, you begin to see the vastness of your own heart. You become aware of just how deeply you have loved, how fiercely you have cared, and how bravely you have endured.
To grieve is to honor every beautiful, fleeting moment that ever filled you with joy.
Even though the Fountain of Joy lies at the very heart of your garden, you can reach it from any corner. It is frequently discovered, unexpectedly, through the trails that meander past the Shrine of Grief.
You may spend a lifetime following every path, scaling every mountain, and peering into every nook in search of Joy, yet you may never succeed. But rest awhile in your garden and you may find yourself standing right in front of it. Briefly. For Joy is fleeting, they say.
You start to realize how vast and untamed your garden is as you sit down and absorb everything—the loves, the grief, and your hopes and dreams. You were never meant to be understood or defined by a person, an event or even or even a feeling.
A faint, flowery breeze wafts past, and suddenly you see it—the Fountain of Joy. Its waters are liquid light, dazzling and glittering as they leap up into the sunlight. And it feels like—those lazy, warm afternoons spent chasing your cousins, breathless with laughter, or watching your little bunny, nestled in the crook of your arm, close its eyes as you gently stroked it...
And just as suddenly as it began, you find yourself back where you started—in the garden of Love. But this time, the flowers are in full bloom, the water is gushing, and the birds are singing again.
Your garden lives and thrives.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.” - William Shakespeare
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damn this is so good!!!!!!🌻