The Liberation of Separation

                                  “Find a girl, settle down,
                                   If you want you can marry…

                                  Take your time; think a lot,
                                  Why, think of everything you’ve got.
                                  For you’ll still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.”

                                                                                                 — Cat Stevens, “Father and Son”

One thing they don’t tell you about divorce is that it makes you question everything. Not just your choice of life partner, but life itself.

If love is the certainty that you have found “the one”, and marriage is the public expression of that certainty, then the failure of a marriage calls everything into question. You find yourself wondering how you could have been so wrong, and questioning whether you can ever be certain about anything again.

I have never thought of myself as a man of faith, and certainly never religious. Yet the mental journey I have taken since separation has made me realise my life has been guided by faith. Not the sort of faith that is expressed through prayers, worship and organised religion, but something much simpler – faith as holding an idea in your head and letting it guide you.

I now know that being certain is just believing something. Even a scientist who is absolutely certain of evolution, gravity or Einstein’s theory of relativity must have faith – he believes in logic, mathematics or the scientific method.

So maybe I wasn’t wrong to declare my love in front of friends and family. On that day I was absolutely certain. I had faith in the love I felt and in our future together. The only way you can build a future is by believing in something, and acting upon it. The life you lead is the fruit of your investment in that belief.

Yes, my life so far didn’t turn out as I had envisioned, but it doesn’t mean I was wrong to follow my heart. To go through life hesitating, doubting the conviction of your beliefs and failing to act would only lead to impotence and misery. It doesn’t matter what you believe, but you have to believe in something.

Now I ask myself, “What beliefs have shaped my life so far? What unconscious life choices have I made?”, and the answer is obvious:  I believed in the traditional blueprint for life: Go to school. Go to university. Travel. Build a career. Meet a girl. Marry. Settle down. Buy a home. Have kids. Prepare them for the future. Live happily ever after.

It’s a path I still believe in, and one day I will be ready to get back on board… but right now I’m taking a detour, and it feels incredibly liberating. Because there is no roadmap for life after divorce. There are no expectations of what to do next. I can choose what to believe and see where it takes me – into a world of possibility; a million futures imagined and unimagined. For my life to be happy and worthwhile, all I need is the conviction to pursue what I believe in. As Gandhi once said, “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” You cannot ignore the fire in your soul.

As for me, the veil has lifted. I needn’t follow tradition or meet the expectations of others. I have faith in my idea. For the first time in my life, I am truly free to fulfil it. And this is just the beginning.

You can read my past journal entries about my journey through my separation here.