The Things We Chase, the Things We Keep: Identity, Desire, and the Softness of Love
There’s a certain electricity in desire.
The pursuit of something meaningful — a dream, a feeling, a connection, can animate us. The pursuit can be energising because it’s full of possibility. It gives us direction, and a future self to reach toward.
But holding onto what we’ve gained — tending to it with care, consistency, and truth - asks for something softer and steadier.
Not because what we have is less precious, but because keeping asks for something different from us: less adrenaline, more presence; less performance, and more honesty.
The Shift from Wanting to Keeping
Why is keeping something so often harder than gaining it?
The chase runs on imagination and filled with possibility.
Keeping runs on intention —it’s grounded in reality.
When the pursuit ends, the mind can no longer be fuelled by what might be. We simply meet what is. And what is — in all its beauty and imperfection, asks us to show up differently.
With steadiness. With patience. With love that looks like everyday care, noticing the simple cues.
This is where many of us struggle. Not because we don’t value what we’ve achieved, but because the muscles of maintenance — attention, gratitude, and renewal, are quieter and less sexy than the sprint of desire.
The Identities We Outgrow
Often what’s impossible to hold isn’t the thing itself — it’s the version of ourselves we thought we had to be to achieve it.
We carry old identities that once kept us safe: the strong one, the certain one, the one who doesn’t need. But identities breathe. They change shape.
If you’re in a season of becoming, you are not behind. You are simply human.
But identities evolve. They expire if we don’t flex them. When we cling to who we were, we miss who we’re becoming. We start performing instead of living; curating instead of connecting.
Honesty makes connection kinder. It makes life more real.
Love — for ourselves and others, invites the opposite. It asks us to tell the truth of who we are today, even if it’s softer, messier, or still forming. It asks us to turn up, as we are and to shift to here and now.
Love as Practice, (Not Perfection)
Love often begins with desire — with the idea of what it might awaken within us. But once it arrives, love asks for a steadier practice: presence, patience, repair, and the willingness to grow side by side.
Love asks us to put down the performance and pick up the practice and sounds like:
“I’m listening”
“Let’s take this slowly”
“I didn’t get that right — can we try again?”
“I'm here, and I see you”
Love doesn’t require us to be ready all at once. It forgives false starts, falling flat, and the long journey of allowing kindness to guide becoming.
If you’re walking through something heavy, let this be your permission: you are not too much to love, and you are not too late to begin again. Love invites us to become who we’re ready to be at any given moment — accepted for who we are right now.
From Grasping to Tending
Maybe the real work is to stop gripping what we’re afraid to lose and start tending to what we’re grateful to hold.
Wanting is easy. Keeping is a gentle discipline of attention, honesty, and return.
And in that practice, there is hope — that who we are is allowed to change, that love can meet us in the in‑between. The things we tend to slowly, quietly — are the things that help build us.
Because nothing is truly ours to own, which is exactly why it deserves our deepest care while it’s here.
So let's love deeply, mindfully and honestly — with the faith that we are all enough, just by being our truest selves.
Live organically.
How Relationships Challenge Who We Think We Are
Relationships stretch identity in the best possible way. They are mirrors - reflecting back what we might not see alone.
It is only through connection, we notice:
how we communicate when we can’t find the words
the patterns we inherited and the ones we’re ready to release
the ways we seek reassurance, control, or distance
the places we’re brave — and the places we’re still tender
This is love doing its deepest work — it’s refining us.
Not judging, not demanding, just inviting us to meet ourselves more kindly.
Not only soothing, but awakening us.
Relationships invite us to meet ourselves more honestly, to step into the version of ourselves who we’ve been creating our whole lives.
The Courage Required to Be Known Fully
To be known is a soft kind of bravery as it’s easier to be admired than to be seen. It doesn’t require a grand reveal — just small, simple and honest moments.
Being known asks us to:
saying “I don’t know, but I’m here”
naming a feeling before it gets stuck
letting someone see you on a day when you don’t feel like a finished version of yourself
choosing truth over performance, gently and often
This isn’t demand dramatic courage, it’s the quiet courage of return. The willingness to keep bringing our honest self back to the table, trusting that love can hold what is real.