Love and the Aurora Borealis

An excerpt from my upcoming book, “The Art of Dancing in the Rain.”  

Consider the Aurora Borealis — the magical spectacle of green and blue lights in the Northern sky, dancing like liquid flame. Those dancing molecules are always there, but conditions have to be right to see it. This phenomenon happens when electrons are energized as they accelerate and follow Earth’s magnetic field into the polar regions. There they collide with oxygen and nitrogen atoms and molecules, causing energy transfers and excited atoms. When they relax, they release their energy in the form of light.

Now consider love. When we fall in love, we identify that individual with feelings of warmth and electricity, as if they bestow love. But is your beloved really the source of that feeling?

Falling in love, rather, is like holding up a mirror to our own fire and spark. We hold the potential for that kind of love within ourselves, but it needs the right conditions — the right person — for it to flare, shine, and dance.

The feelings we have in our minds and bodies when we are in love are ours. We own them. And when they are switched on, they are intoxicating. Like the Northern Lights. Magic lights dancing in the sky, flaring, shining, collapsing, and rising again. Love and the Aurora Borealis — the stuff that energizes you right down to your electrons.

It is painful when someone we deeply love is gone. It feels as if the sun has left the sky; that joy, enthusiasm, and zest for life has been sucked out into the ocean. It’s easy to feel like everything went out to sea with him. (Or her.) He’s gone, and it’s like trying to see the sun at night

Consider the notion that the wild spark of crazy love is always inside of you; it’s part of your organic make-up. It’s in your DNA. But something about your beloved allowed you to access that love. All of those feelings were yours, and they still are.

Heartbreak and longing are real. A person’s unique companionship is a gift, and its absence a great loss. But they don’t take it all with them. The feelings of joy and vitality came from you. They may fall silent when you are heartbroken, but you still own those feelings. At the very least, this perspective allows you to see that your vitality was not stolen. It will be there, dormant perhaps, and will shine again.

This perspective was transformative for me; it allowed me to keep my balance, realizing that it’s not all about him and what he gives me. I own it and always will. I have the lights of the Aurora Borealis dancing inside me.  ©Margaret B. Moss