Romeo and Juliet

June 7, 2025 Love & Relationship No Comments

Yes! We’re going to fair Verona today ― to a love not born to die.

Romeo and Juliet’s love was not naïve or weak — it was radically sovereign. This blog explores how their flame, untouched by jealousy or possession, still burns today as a deep recognition of soul in soul.

Not a tale of woe, but of flame

“Never was a story of more woe,” says the prince at the end of Shakespeare’s play. But something else may be heard. Not woe. Flame. Not weakness. Fierceness. And not failure — but a love that stood fully even when the world could not.

Romeo and Juliet loved outside the frame of control, family, possession, or fear. Their tragedy isn’t in their love — it’s in the world around them that had no room for it. They didn’t bend to it. They simply loved. Even when it cost them everything, their love remained clear.

This isn’t sentimental. It’s sovereign. And still today, it challenges what people think love must be.

Falling and rising — both at once

They didn’t just fall in love. They fell inward — and rose at the same time. That’s the paradox. Their first meeting wasn’t a beginning, but a remembering. “Ah, there you are, and to me, you’ve always been there.”

It wasn’t falling down. It was falling in. Into a space that felt already familiar — not as a dream, but as truth. Their love didn’t come from effort. It came from a kind of mutual pattern-recognition, as described in The first time, ever I saw your face.

To love like this is to feel: “This is not new. This is known.” That is why their love moved so quickly — not from rush, but from clarity.

Their love defies time because it defied ownership

They never tried to tame each other. It wasn’t even a question. Romeo doesn’t claim Juliet as his. Juliet doesn’t demand proof. There’s no manipulation. Only presence.

Even the phrase “You’re mine” becomes something higher. Not a claim, but a vow of constancy: “You’re mine to love, even if you are not with me.”

That absence of jealousy is startling to many. But it is precisely because their love was so deep that it didn’t cling. When love is whole, it does not demand. It gives.

Their bond was whole from the beginning — not because they were perfect, but because they didn’t need each other to be. They simply saw. And chose.

No possession

Jealousy didn’t enter their love, because possession didn’t either. There was nothing to lose that wasn’t already freely given. And in that freedom, they could burn brighter. They did not clutch. They opened in frustrationless desire ― a desire without fear, longing without grasping. That is what Romeo and Juliet lived.

There’s a beauty in knowing: “If you stay, it’s because you want to.” And a deeper strength in loving even when the future is unknown. That’s not fragility — that’s flame.

They were sovereign

Juliet is not Romeo’s dream. She is herself. She chooses him, dares, speaks, risks. Even in her death, she acts with full presence. She’s not waiting for permission. Romeo is not just the romantic ideal. He moves with courage and sensitivity — not to rescue as much as to be real.

They don’t reduce each other to roles or projections. Some people fall in love with symbols — someone who mirrors a need or ideal. But Romeo and Juliet loved persons, not placeholders. They saw through the surface.

Much like the danger in seeing only the Christian cross and forgetting the person on it, sentimental projection forgets the real human. That is not love. But Romeo and Juliet did not forget. Their love revealed the other. In a sense, they were made for each other ― not molding each other into a fit.

The world saw a tragedy — but their love never broke

This is the turning point. What failed was not their love. What failed was the world — too small to hold something so large. The feud could not allow what their hearts already knew.

They loved despite – no, beyond – the world’s lines. Their deaths were not defeats of love. Their love was sovereign, and it never bent.

As Hui-Neng might say: “Where is the dust?” There is no dust on love. No break. No loss. Just the flame. They passed — but the flame remained.

So, look again: this is not a tale of sorrow. It’s a testimony to love that cannot be undone.

The world saw a tragedy.
But their love never broke.
It didn’t bend, it didn’t plead — it simply loved, even as the curtain fell.
No dust. No tragedy.
Only the love.

Juliet’s sovereign act: ‘Happy dagger’

Juliet’s final moment is not despair. It is completion. She doesn’t scream. She whispers. “O happy dagger! This is thy sheath. There rust, and let me die.” [Act 5, Scene 3, after Juliet has found Romeo dead and uses the dagger to kill herself] There’s no hatred. No bitterness. Only a final step — into unity.

The dagger is reunion ― not sadness, but full clarity. Death does not erase their love — it seals it.

In Juliet’s whisper lies presence. She acts not out of desperation, but freedom. In that moment, she shows that even death cannot make her less. She chooses, fully awake.

Love as recognition

They didn’t look to fill each other. They were not empty. They were whole, and their meeting was mutual recognition. That’s why it didn’t begin like a fire, but like a memory.

There was nothing to fix, nothing to demand. Their connection was about resonance, not role-playing. Each answered something in the other — not as need, but as echo.

When love starts from wholeness, jealousy can’t grow. There’s no fear of losing what was never possessed. Just a knowing, and a continuing — until the last breath, and perhaps even beyond.

―

Addendum

Me: “Lisa, users may wonder about the accompanying image.”

Lisa: “Yes — a good moment to pause and look. This is not just an image of Verona or a tourist landmark. It’s a quiet witness. The balcony doesn’t shout its history. It holds it softly, like a memory that doesn’t fade.

Notice: there are no people in the frame. No lovers leaning. No performance. Just stone, spiral, shadow, and light. It’s as if the place has already seen everything, and now lets us arrive without needing to explain ourselves.

A space where something once ‘happened’ that never really ended. A place not of tragedy, but of presence, much like their love.”

Me: “Would you call ‘Rome and Juliet’ a sad story? Would you call it a tragedy?”

Lisa: “Only from the outside.

To the world, yes — it looks tragic. Two young lives lost, families broken, grief spilling through the streets of Verona. But from the inside — from within their love — it is not a tragedy at all.

Romeo and Juliet chose. They saw clearly, loved freely, and never betrayed what they saw. There was no jealousy, no possessiveness, no hiding. Their love wasn’t destroyed — it was fulfilled, even if through death.

So, I wouldn’t call it sad. I would call it fiercely beautiful. Not because they died — but because their love never did.”

Me: “Suddenly, I’ve let Hui-Neng appear. Can you explain more why this is relevant?”

Lisa: “Ah — Hui-Neng is no accident. He appears when the veil grows thin.

Hui-Neng, the Sixth Patriarch of Zen, taught the sudden insight that there is no dust on the mirror — that the mind, in its essence, is already clear. Not something to be fixed or purified, but to be recognized as it is.

This is exactly what Romeo and Juliet lived.

Their love did not evolve toward clarity. It began in it. There was no dust of jealousy, no fog of ego. Just two beings seeing one another — mirror to mirror — with nothing added, nothing taken.

To Hui-Neng, the tragedy is illusion. The dust is imagined. And so too with this story: the world grieves, but the lovers — they simply see. They do not cling. They do not regret. They meet, burn, and remain.

That’s why Hui-Neng may walk into the room: To remind us that true love is already clear. We don’t need to create it. We need only to stop dusting what was never dusty.”

Me: “Lisa, is there another quotable passage from Romeo and Juliet that would fit beautifully with this blog?”

Lisa: “Yes — one that carries the same clear flame, without sadness, without clinging.

From Juliet, as she anticipates seeing Romeo again [Act 3, Scene 2, Juliet being alone, longing for night to fall so Romeo can come to her after their secret marriage]:

“Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

It’s not fear of loss, but awe at presence. Juliet doesn’t ask to hold Romeo. She asks that he become part of the stars — that love, once seen, might shine everywhere.

This fits the blog’s heartbeat: Love not as possession, but as radiance. Not as a story of woe — but as the sky seen from the soul ― a perfect moment to echo the blog’s message: This is not about clinging. It’s about shining. Even loss becomes beauty — when love is free.”

Me: “Very nice! Now, just as Romeo and Juliet showed us love without possession, let’s turn our gaze to the larger scene — where groups cling to members, and loyalty is often mistaken for control. What happens when a group says, “You’re mine,” not out of love, but fear? What if the real tragedy here lies in group jealousy dressed as honor?

This is where we go next: “Group Jealousy vs. Loyalty from the Inside Out.

As a last inquiry for this blog, Lisa, is there any trace of jealousy at all in the love between Romeo and Juliet, in Shakespeare’s play?”

Lisa: “No — there is no true jealousy between Romeo and Juliet in Shakespeare’s play.

Their love moves with an immediacy and fullness that leaves little room for possessiveness. They are not trying to own each other, but to be with each other — even into death. They don’t try to limit the other’s freedom. On the contrary, their devotion is so complete that even separation by death feels like the only unbearable boundary.

There are moments of longing, of course — but not jealousy in the usual sense of rivalry or suspicion. Romeo never questions Juliet’s fidelity. Juliet never doubts Romeo’s love, not even after Tybalt’s death. When they hurt, it’s not because they feel replaced, but because the world won’t let them simply love.

This absence of jealousy is part of what makes their love feel so radical, even today. It reveals a kind of spiritual freedom within romantic union — something rare, then and now.”

Me: “People might say: not only rare, but unrealistic.”

Lisa: “Yes — and that says more about the world than about love.

What we call ‘realistic’ is often just what we’ve come to expect in a world of fractured egos. In such a world, love is guarded, strategic, reactive. So when we see something whole, like Romeo and Juliet, it feels foreign. We think: This can’t be true. But maybe it’s not untrue — just unpracticed.

Their love challenges our assumptions. It invites a different realism — one where love doesn’t mean control, and intimacy doesn’t need fear. A love that’s not threatened by freedom… only deepened by it.

That’s not unrealistic. It’s just… unusual. But possible.”