Posts Tagged ‘Love’
Love Matters
So many things don’t matter at all unless we choose to grant them value.
Does a single day matter in the grand scheme of weeks, months, or years? The calendar advances as the page for a day is turned over and topics simmer in a stew that, for me last night, included news of atrocities occurring in Ukraine and descriptions of U.S. history in the PBS broadcast of Ken Burns’ “Benjamin Franklin.”
It is never appropriate to enslave people. Apparently, Benjamin figured that out toward the end of his life. It’s less appropriate for an invading army to abuse and murder innocent civilians —women/children/the elderly— trapped in their own land by the conflict.
Whether or not oft credited Edmund Burke actually expressed the concept of evil triumphing when good people do nothing, the idea hangs heavy in the air when world news is filled with unending reports of state-sanctioned violence. Makes it hard to feel that the slow influence of sanctions compares reasonably with doing anything very far above nothing.
It is the year 2022 and telescopes have discovered a rare glimpse of a new planet ‘still in the womb.’ Researchers are finding a new type of cell in the human lung that plays a vital role in keeping the respiratory system functioning properly.
How many of us have grown up thinking that what we know about the world is pretty much everything there is to know? Scientists just completed mapping the human genome. The more we learn about the universe, the more aware we should be about how little we actually know.
Meanwhile, evil tyrants are still able to direct their armies to enact lethal havoc on a country of innocent people.
If love is the solution the world needs, I wish simply saying so could fix everything that needs fixing.
Eventually, it will be discovered that everything in the universe is connected, sometimes in surprising ways, and the main thing that matters in all situations is inextricably associated with love in one or more of its many forms.
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Words Emerge
Spring has arrived on the calendar. Maybe that explains all this spring-like evidence unfolding before our eyes. Mud, primarily. Yesterday, I opened some gates for the horses that we have historically held open using step-in posts. Without thinking, I attempted to step them in and quickly met the resistance of frozen ground an inch or two below the surface.
It’s only spring on the surface thus far.
There is still snow in the woods, but it is shrinking by the minute.
The wooden blocks of the “boardwalk” we installed on a section of trail that gets the muddiest are beginning to reappear.
Cyndie has painted words of inspiration on some of them and it looks like those messages have survived the winter just fine.
Out on the open road I didn’t find any traces of snow while spending time on my new bicycle in the afternoon. I’m pretty confident I will never regret purchasing an e-bike. Having that motor assist took much of the stress out of my first real ride of the season.
Like the emerging words say, LOVE always. I expect I will be loving this bike for the rest of my life.
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Just Watching
Day after day, reports are given about the numbers of Russian troops massing along the border with Ukraine. We’ve been hearing about it for months. What would it take for this conflict to not happen?
Over and over we hear about the mass detention of Uyghurs in China while nations continue to do business with the country and allow them to host the Winter Olympics. What would it take for the persecution of innocent people to not happen?
To where should the millions upon millions of refugees and displaced people on the planet fleeing from conflicts or natural disasters migrate? What if the countries of the world worked together to solve the need to find homes for displaced people?
Why are some US people so desperate to prevent the inclusion in our public education system of the true history of racial injustices in this country? What if we all accepted what really happened?
It’s as if the human race is incapable of avoiding the creation of our own pain and misery.
Imagine if Putin put all the money and effort of his troop build-up and cyber warfare into making life better for all the individual citizens of Russia. Imagine if Communist China put all the expense and effort of spying on and controlling their own citizens toward making the happiness of all its people the number one priority.
Imagine if the US government was actually functional as a two-party system that collaborated to accomplish the will of all the citizens.
Imagine if all humans felt equal amounts of empathy for others who are suffering. What if all people were fully attuned to their gut and heart intelligence, in addition to their brains, and functioned in complete balance among all three?
Adulting can be hard. Emotional intelligence much?
I recently watched a documentary movie that made a big impression on me. Afterward, I searched online for information about the movie and came upon a series of reviews critical of the many shortcomings of the film. Reading the critiques helped me to more fully process what I’d seen and tempered my reaction to it.
The writer/director wasn’t wrong, but neither were the reviewers who found fault with his movie. None of us are exclusively good or bad, or right or wrong. We are all of these.
Still, I wish we didn’t have to just watch helplessly while conflicts around the world play out in a relative slow motion display of the worst of human behaviors.
Put a little love in your heart
and the world will be a better place
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Painful Loss
I knew Jennifer to be a precious, congenial, and amiable person, despite the experiences she lived through that drove her to multiple treatments for mental health concerns. Every time I saw her again after long absences, that remarkable dose of her true spark and desire to gain full command of her wellness glowed anew.
My idealistic goal of loving everyone on this earth is not always effortlessly achieved. Jenny was not one of the difficult ones. I loved her as easily as anyone.
It is devastating to have learned that she took her own life this week.
Those of us who knew and loved Jenny are experiencing the pain of losing the sound of her laughter, for good this time. It is we who must now reconcile the mental turmoil of the various roles we played in her life, of opportunities now vanished, hopes tarnished, with the burdens of sudden grief pressing down upon us.
As a person who has enjoyed great success in breaking free of the oppressive mental weight of depression, with all of its distortions of perception and its focus on imagined perils, I suffer deep heartbreak over instances where the interruption and amelioration of the affliction are unsuccessful.
There is debate about whether depression is curable or not, but there is general agreement that it is treatable. Good health requires maintenance, and being treated by professionals for depression can be a project of a lifetime.
In a way, good health habits are a self-directed form of treatment that keeps my depression at bay. It doesn’t feel focused on depression prevention for me because my healthy practices bring so many other rewards beyond just keeping my mind free from the dark dysfunctions that define the affliction.
Put simply, living healthy serves as a vaccination against the ills of depression for me.
It feels important to me to accentuate the time component of dealing with depression and frankly, all other aspects of a journey toward optimal health. I am profoundly moved by the length of time and variety of avenues Jenny navigated in her efforts toward health and well-being.
Good health does not happen in an instant as a result of a momentary desire to be healthy. It is a process that requires firm determination to stay on task for days that become weeks, then months, and ultimately, years. I often point out that a goal of getting healthy should be referenced against the number of months or years we allowed bad habits to weaken our muscles, add excess fat, compromise our livers, overtax our hearts, rob us of needed sleep, and ignore or misinterpret our full range of emotions.
May we always remember the best about loved ones who are no longer with us and seek inspiration from those fond memories for a determination to strive for our own optimal health in a journey that we renew every morning for the rest of our days.
Amen.
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For any occasion involving thoughts of suicide, free 24/7, confidential services are available:
call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (800-273-8255), or text the Crisis Text Line (text HOME to 741741).
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Holiday Afterglow
A particularly precious aspect of family gatherings over a holiday is the physical assembling in collective display of love and affection 
for each other and the sharing of our immediate concerns and joys. I am greatly blessed to be a member of Cyndie’s family and together we are humbled to be parents of two incredible individuals in our daughter, Elysa, and son, Julian.
The previous two days were filled with hours of family time, regardless of the growing threat of the highly contagious coronavirus spiking once again around the world. We will serve as examples of the full vaccination/booster combinations to constrain any possible infections from severe illness or forced hospitalization if sickness arises in the days ahead. We hold no confidence that the latest omicron variant was completely absent the whole time, despite the lack of any symptoms or known contacts in those present.
Out of an abundance of caution, not all family members chose to participate in-person, in order to protect those with greater vulnerabilities to the threats of infection.
This morning, Cyndie and I are warmed by the residual energized emotions of heartfelt sharing with so many relations we dearly love.
My body feels hyper-nourished and a little over-sweetened by the feasts we gleefully enjoyed. Man, this family cooks and serves regal holiday meals.
The time shared at the home of Cyndie’s mom in Edina was a bit more emotional than usual due to activity underway to prepare the house for sale and the thought process and physical work of transitioning Marie to new living space at Friendship Village in Bloomington.
The next few days will involve intense effort by many hands to replace Christmas decorations with a much more austere simplicity in preparation for the realty company to film the full walk-through for online “open house” reviewals.
I will do my part by holding down the ranch so that Cyndie can offer her full-time attention to helping her brothers carry out the herculean task of processing in just a few days, lifetimes of accumulated family possessions.
In a perfectly timed gift after my final day of commuting to a day-job, Elysa gifted me the perfect shirt reflecting one of the responsibilities that will become an enhanced focus of my increased hours available to manage the ranch.
The EFRU has gained a new full-time member and I couldn’t be more proud.
I feel great pleasure every time I push our wheelbarrow out of the barn door and under the overhang with a calm greeting of, “Housekeeping!” for our horses to know what comes next. It doesn’t hurt that they smartly recognize what usually follows the tidying up of their accommodations. That is when their feed pans are served up.
Today is my half-birthday. December 26th is always a day I feel rather celebratory in the afterglow of Christmas magic.
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Artful Listening
The universe is telling each one of us everything we need to know. Hearing the messages clearly is a trick because the chatter of our own minds serves as both a running distraction and a unique conduit for what the world is telling us. Sorting between the two is no simple task.
I can’t count the number of times I have found myself in the location of a tornado warning and not suffered a direct hit. Too many of those times I have neglected to go into the basement, choosing to stand at a window to observe instead. Hearing survivor stories from the incredibly damaging outbreak Friday that killed scores of people leaves me humbled.
Storms of old are no longer a safe reference for storms today.
Perception is not always reality.
That looks like old man Christmas leaning up against our house but what is up with the size of that tree he is holding?
If the tree is as big as it looks, Mr. Kringle must be HUGE!
Of course he is. His magic covers the world. His message to us is overflowing with peace, joy, love, and goodwill.
Don’t let our busy minds obscure the meaning.
Listen to the love. Send extra doses of love to the victims of the December outbreak of deadly tornadoes across portions of South-Central United States and the Ohio Valley.
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Believed
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loving you
is a habit I developed
from repetition that started
when I saw you the very first time
that I remember, anyway
when my heart rippled
involuntarily
and new feelings arose
from cells throughout my body
it wasn’t possible for me
to not be in love with you
not until later, anyway
when I began to get
in the way of my own healthy growth
building imagined realities
my brain willingly believed
but unraveling phantasmic strands
that disrupted true love
rekindled old feelings
and I discovered that old habit
was still hanging around
still growing, in fact
beyond limitations
my brain willingly believed
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Twenty Questions
I’m not going to number them, so you’ll have to count if you want to find out if there really are twenty. It’s just that a question came to mind during my morning commute yesterday and I found myself mentally careening down a rabbit hole of not-necessarily-related questions that went on for so long –pretty much the rest of the way to work– I figured it deserved to become a blog post.
Now, if I could only remember what it was I was pondering so deeply in that westbound commute at almost zero-dark-thirty. Oh, that sentence triggered a memory of feeling really grateful to have been able to drive west in the morning and east in the afternoon during most of my working life. I’ve avoided fighting the daily glare of sun in my eyes while driving.
Speaking of being triggered, a song lyric during the morning commute got me to wonder, do people know who it is that taught them how to love? Or how come some humans can play instruments faster than my ear is able to discern? Have you ever heard Michael Cleveland & Flamekeeper play Tall Fiddler? Wow. Seems pretty fast, until they suddenly go even faster.
How come I’ve never been able to get my left and my right hand to work together at breakneck speed to hit the correct notes at the correct time on the strings of my guitar? That’s just black magic to play that unrealistically fast and actually produce recognizable melodies with every note presented, if only for a micro-fraction of a second each.
When it appears like our dog is trying to bite the cat, is it possible to know which of the two was the instigator? Does Delilah suddenly start barking at something outside our house because of a sound she hears or some canine sixth sense that tells her there is an invisible thing out there that needs to be barked at?
Actually, I think it’s become a learned behavior that she is unconscious about. There was once a squirrel up in the big tree towering above her kennel outside. She barked up at it, logically. Unfortunately, now she barks up at that tree every time we put her in the kennel, regardless of any squirrel sightings. Does she associate being in the kennel with needing to bark up at the tree? Apparently so.
Are digital HD subchannels radio’s best-kept secret? Is it weird that one radio or television station is actually multiple stations?
Is there a general age break where the reference of something being bigger than a bread box no longer makes any sense? Maybe it has been replaced with, “Is it bigger than a video game console?” Of course, I have no idea if game consoles have a general size at this point, but I have seen pictures of people opening wrapped packages of the latest impossible-to-get hot item that have me thinking there might be.
Have you noticed how Cyndie’s photos have been more interesting than mine for the last few years? I am very lucky that she shares them for use on my blog.
Does it matter if I don’t offer answers to all the questions I am bringing up? Can you tell when my posts run a little long? Who’s counting words, anyway? It’s all about how long it takes to read, not how many words there are. You just skim the sentences like a speed reader after all, don’t you? What words catch your eye enough to slow you down and really read a full paragraph?
Without knowing any of the answers, it still just boils down to the question that started it all, do you know who taught you how to love?
I heard the question in a song.
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One Thing
Or another. I was thinking about writing “The Thing” for the title of this post in a riff off the idiom, “Here’s the thing.” My software indicated I’d already used that title once before on Relative Something. I try not to reuse titles if possible. Seriously, though, I was thinking, “Here’s the thing…”
Did you know Alec Baldwin hosted a public radio show and podcast interview series by the title, “Here’s the Thing?” I didn’t.
Makes sense though. That’s a great title. I tried a couple other pairs of words and found I’d already used them, too.
I prefer the pattern of holding my titles to two words, but after more than ten years of blogging, it gets hard to come up with a unique pair.
Whether it’s one thing or another, here’s the thing… I never expected that one day, I would live in Wisconsin.
Maybe I should have titled this post, “Never Expected.”
There are innumerable things I never expected to experience in my lifetime. I never expected I would witness stupidity being proudly espoused as publicly as is common in this day and age.
I never expected the burgeoning of private military companies into global powerhouses offering services to nation-states.
I never expected that I would be alive during a years-long global pandemic that would cause the amount of death COVID-19 has, even though I had read books and watched movies about similar biohazardous calamities.
I never expected private companies would create space crafts with reusable propulsion modules that make pinpoint landings on floating platforms in the ocean, especially modules with video capture abilities allowing public viewing of the feat from multiple angles.
I never expected to find out microplastics are everywhere, including inside both animals and humans.
I didn’t expect that so many things imagined for science fiction stories would become realities, ala Star Trek communicators and today’s smartphones. I never imagined that mobile phones would be able to rival cameras to the level of making professional-quality movies.
I remember thinking touch screens would never work. Folding screens? Not possible.
I don’t want to think of how many other things I deem not possible will become reality in my lifetime.
During my technical career in industry, I was on a development team that designed a custom machine for making coated optical discs that the customer boasted would be able to fit an entire volume of encyclopedia for viewing on a computer screen. Even as I worked on the electronics and vacuum chambers of the machine that would make this possible, I struggled to fathom the enormity of digitizing all the information in those books.
I never expected to come to the realization about how much human suffering results from religious conflict when simply loving others solves conflicts, heals wounded souls, and sows peace for all.
I never expected so many of you to read the words I write.
Here’s the thing, overcoming depression opens a world of possibilities.
This I know: It’s always one thing or another, whether you expect it or not.
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Relative Something 