It was 2016 New Year’s Day around 12 noon at the Hamburg Airport in Germany and my heart had just been sweetly broken open. I was standing at the departure gate watching people say good-bye to each other.
I witnessed a middle-aged mother and father sending off their teenage daughter to somewhere unknown to me, and the love between them was palpable.
She, like Lee and I, had to go through security and her parents kept walking alongside her on the other side of the hip height wall that separated people with and without boarding passes.
When her daughter finally had to turn away from the wall to put her luggage through the X-ray machine, the mother took her face into her hands, her eyes full of love and concern. She called her “Mein Haeschen“ (German for “my little bunny”) and said ”Ich weiss, du schaffst das!” (“I know you can do it”). Then she covered her daughter’s face with little kisses and let her go in the absolute last moment possible.
Similarly there was a young romantic couple; he went through security after they had several passionate kisses and long hugs, and she stood left behind that same hip height wall, tears streaming down her face. It looked like she was trying to hold them back in an attempt to be brave, probably to make it easier for him to go.
I also noticed a young Muslim woman, who stood there alertly watching what looked like her parents and siblings leave. Her eyes were fixed on her departing loved ones, she was absolutely present, as if she did not want to miss one moment of any last glances of her beloveds.
One of the members of her family, a boy who seemed about 10 years old kept looking at her with tears in his eyes with that same alertness and attentiveness in his eyes. A man, who I assumed to be her husband, had his arm around the young woman and his love, empathy and care for her was unmistakable too.
I myself had just said good-bye to my own family minutes before.
I had spent most of December in Germany visiting my rather large and blended family. The last stop was in northern Germany, near Hamburg to visit my mom. My mom, my stepdad and my younger son Tobe who had come for Christmas and was staying on for another month to make his first album with his brother Janosch, my older son, had just waved us good bye.
As always, my mom wanted every last second with me, and she had done the same thing I had just watched: Taking my face into her hands and looked right at me with attentive tender alertness; making sure I knew how much she loved me.
I have travelled a lot in my life, and have always been aware of the presence of love at arrivals, when I had watched people reunite. There is always so much joy because loved ones from all walks of life see each other again.
This time what really struck me at the Hamburg Airport was how much love is present when people are parting. Be it grandparents saying goodbye to their grand children (And oh, do I know from personal experience about that one!), lovers separating or close friends waving fare-well; if we are awake to it, in those moments we are acutely aware of how precious each moment with our loved one is.
Seeing so much love and presence in the faces of the ones parting from one another I realized – again – that one of the qualities of love is attentive alertness. We want to be present, really present to the ones we love and who love us.
We all instinctually know that we, on the deepest level are not separate, and that our perceived separation from others and from God/Spirit/Source is an illusion. But, by God, is it ever a convincing illusion and we need to be really awake and alert to see through it! Most of us have bought the illusion of separation hook, line and sinker; and our mind with its perpetual robotic thinking maintains that split almost constantly with it’s incessant repetition of division enforcing judgments, beliefs and concepts.
So much of the inner work of transformation is about seeing through this convincing illusion of separation, and to be really awake and perceptive to the underlying deeper truth, which is Love. As the theme song went for the New Year’s Eve Party in Berlin, a city that certainly knows about the pain of loved ones separated and the joy of reunification, “Love is Everywhere”.
And on New Year’s Day, at the departure gate at the airport I saw it, I felt it, I heard it and I deeply perceived it. Thank you my unknown brothers and sisters for waking me up to the preciousness of love at the Hamburg Airport!
As for you, dear readers, we invite you to come along with us at COB as we create what we call “Triumphant Transformation- Your Vision in Action in 2016”! Let us support you in staying alert and attentive to your own preciousness and the preciousness of life and love in your daily encounters.
Blessings,
Britta