The Questions We Ask Ourselves

Some of the most meaningful things we write aren't meant to be sent. They are written because we needed to understand what an experience meant to us.

This reflection began as a personal letter. Over time, I realized that beneath the details of one relationship was something much larger: a reflection on love, letting go, choosing yourself, and finding your way home.

There are moments in life when a simple question becomes something much deeper than we intended.

I remember lying beside someone I cared deeply for, reminiscing about life, when I asked, “What makes you happy?”

At the time, I thought I was asking someone else to look inward. What I didn't realize was that, in asking the question, I was asking it of myself, too.

Looking back, I began to notice that this happened again and again throughout our time together. Questions I asked seemed to turn back toward me. Things I noticed in another became invitations to examine something within myself. The more I paid attention, the more I began to understand what it might mean for two people to mirror one another.

Perhaps the people who enter our lives sometimes reflect back parts of ourselves that we haven't yet fully seen.

One of the things I've learned is that it's far easier to recognize someone else's beauty than it is to recognize our own. The people with the gentlest hearts often spend so much of their lives caring for everyone else that, somewhere along the way, they lose sight of themselves.

And perhaps that's why the question of happiness stayed with me.

What if happiness isn't something extraordinary at all?

What if it's learning to say no when you've spent a lifetime saying yes? What if it's lying beside the ocean with nowhere to be and feeling no guilt for simply existing? Or maybe it's allowing yourself to believe that the love, joy, and passion your heart has always longed for were never impossible—they were only buried beneath the pain that taught you to protect yourself.

The more I reflected, the more I began asking myself deeper questions.

Are the lives we're living actually aligned with the lives we want?

Are our choices coming from truth, or from fear, obligation, habit, or the expectations we've carried for so long that we've forgotten they were ever choices?

And what happens when someone enters our life and, simply by being there, causes us to question the things we've been avoiding within ourselves?

I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I don't believe our experiences are meant only to be labeled as right or wrong, but also understood for what they reveal about us.

Maybe some experiences are less about making a mistake and more about allowing ourselves to see something we hadn't yet been willing to acknowledge.

Maybe they ask us to look more honestly at what we truly want, even when doing so means disappointing people, unintentionally hurting others, or making difficult choices.

I think our experiences can become invitations to ask harder questions of ourselves.

What am I really choosing?

What am I afraid to admit?

Where have I been allowing fear or obligation to make decisions for me?

And perhaps most importantly: Is the life I'm living aligned with the life I truly want?

I don't know that there are always immediate answers to those questions. Sometimes the asking is the beginning.

I've learned that if we're willing to ask them honestly, even painful experiences can reveal truths we weren't ready to see.

Such as choosing yourself.

Choosing yourself isn't only about pursuing happiness. It's also about having the courage to be truthful, even when the truth costs you something.

Without honesty, “choosing yourself” can become permission to avoid difficult conversations. With honesty, it becomes integrity.

And maybe that's one of the greatest gifts another person can give us—not necessarily by staying, but by reflecting something back to us that we needed to see.

Sometimes another person becomes a mirror.

Not because they are meant to complete us, save us, or become ours to keep, but because through knowing them, we encounter parts of ourselves we may have otherwise never discovered.

I used to believe the greatest love story was finding someone who would choose me. Now I believe the greatest love story is becoming someone who chooses herself—even while loving someone else deeply.

Loving someone doesn't mean they become yours to keep. Sometimes it means honoring what they awakened in you, carrying it forward, and allowing them the freedom to become who they were always meant to be.

Maybe that's love's greatest lesson.

That the deepest love isn't measured by whether someone stays, but by whether your heart can continue wishing them peace, joy, and a beautiful life even when you're no longer the one walking beside them.

Maybe that's also why the soulmate we spend our life searching for has always been waiting for us.

Because every person we've loved was never taking us away from ourselves. They were always leading us back home—to the parts of ourselves we had been waiting to find.

And perhaps that is what it means to truly come back to yourself.

To take what you've learned.

To honor what you've felt.

To release what is no longer yours to carry.

And to recognize that even the relationships that don't become what we once imagined can still leave something beautiful behind.

Not because they were perfect.

Not because they lasted.

But because they changed us.

And for that, no matter where life leads us from here, I will always be grateful for the paths that crossed mine.

Maybe the greatest gift we can give ourselves is to stop measuring our lives by what we were able to keep and begin noticing what each experience helped us discover.

Sometimes the person we thought we were searching for was never the destination.

Sometimes they were simply part of the journey back to ourselves.

And maybe the soulmate we've spent our lives searching for has been waiting for us all along.