Bhakti's Question: Whom Do You Serve?

Mirabai's bhakti practice was fundamentally about clarity of purpose: to whom or what do you offer your complete devotion? This question becomes urgent in anticipatory grief. When facing someone's approaching death or decline, you're forced to ask: What does love ask of me now? Am I serving the person's actual needs, or am I serving my own need to be needed? Am I present in this relationship, or am I rehearsing loss? Bhakti's question cuts through ambivalence. For Mirabai, everything—reputation, family, comfort—was secondary to her devotion to Krishna. Similarly, when you clarify whom you serve in a relationship shadowed by anticipatory grief, priorities become stark. Perhaps love asks you to let go of old resentments. Perhaps it asks you to be more honest. Perhaps it asks you to simply show up, without fixing or controlling. By returning repeatedly to the bhakti question—Whom do I serve, and with what kind of love?—you move from passive dread into active, purposeful presence.