Single Again… The Big Risk

 

By Kenneth Stepp

I’ve been a businessman my entire life. I have risked big to win big. In business it’s called “the risk and reward system”. Everyone who has their own business will understand this, because it’s what they do every time they open their doors to people. There are many variables too. For example, if we are dealing with the public, not everyone will have our integrity, not everyone understands fairness, not everyone is honest. Welcome to Small Business 101. Life is no different really. We aren’t in the widget business. We’re all in the people business. One human transferring something to another human, for something they believe to be more valuable to them than what they transferred for it. Stay with me, I promise there is a point here somewhere.

Once we attain this, whatever it is, the public value of it doesn’t matter, only the value of it to the person who now has it. Does that make sense? Often I write something that sounds right in my head, but transfers poorly in writing, it’s why I love my editor. An editor makes a writer seem much smarter than the writer actually is. I’m blessed in this regard, I just wish I had the good sense to actually take the time and allow my editor to edit my writings, most of the time, sadly, I do not.

I have a dear friend who’s father died a few years back. He was close with his daughter, didn’t have a lot to leave her. But every day he wore a gold necklace. She never saw him without it on. Every photo of him she has, he is wearing it. That necklace is probably worth about $200.00 in gold. I’m unsure of its purity. But to my friend, it means much more. She now wears it everyday herself. In all the photos of her online, she has it on. Should she lose that necklace, she would be devastated. It would be an incalculable loss. You see. To a gold dealer it can be weighed and a value placed on it. To my friend. That’s all she has left of someone she loved deeply.

“The more you love. The more you have to lose” – Kenneth Stepp

Now to my point. All of us, with the exception of a very few, are looking for love. Unconditional love. That partner of all partners, our soulmate. That’s if you still believe there is a soulmate out there. Should you still believe in the existence of your soulmate, read further. This person will not be perfect to anyone but you when you find them, they will have flaws, but they will love you and you will love them. Real, unconditional, forever love. So you will see them through, what I call, the love filter. It helps if I explain the love filter. Or at least where the idea came from for me. In Ephesians 5, there is a phrase that confused me for a while. “He presented her to himself, perfect and without flaw”. I paraphrased to make my point. When you love someone beyond yourself. You see the good, not the bad or the scars. I see her beauty, I see her value to myself…

“He told me that when we first met, he had said to a friend about me: “If I get that girl’s number I will never ask another girl for her number again.”

― Kimberly Novosel

I know when I find my Forever, I will have found someone more valuable to me than I am to me. A phenomenon I wasn’t sure was even real. So, like my friend’s necklace she wears daily. I will have something, or in my case, someone, who was more valuable to me than she could ever be to the world. I will find myself, not in possession, because we do not own someone, but in a relationship with a person whose value is incalculable to me. One man may see her as a date, a girlfriend, or something less than G rated. I will see her as my universe. Losing a date, a trinket, or even a friend cannot compare to losing a soulmate. Losing someone you truly love. Big risk, big reward. For those of you who are on that quest, when you find them, give all of yourself, leave nothing hidden, accept imperfect, don’t question what is, and don’t be afraid to love the most…

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” ― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets