Category Archives: falling in love

Falling in love (an interview)

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– Do you think you’ll fall in love again?

– (Smiling) I don’t know that I have much say in the matter.

– How’s that?

– I don’t think falling in love is something you choose. It just happens. It’s like one of those exquisitely delicious moments life offers, like, for me, the first time birds find the newly placed birdfeeder. The breathy gasp of joy is out of me before I know it. Like falling in love, it just happens. Your experience of the moment or the person simply happens.

– So a person’s powerless? Defenseless?

– What would you be defending? As for powerless, you’re not. You have a lot of say over what you do in response to falling in love. You can pack up and run. Some do. Or you can allow the experience.

– What about rushing into it?

– I’m not sure you have, speaking for myself anyway, that you have much choice over the intensity of feelings.  I think there is such a thing as moving to quickly. Remember to breathe, enjoy the beginning of things. There are a couple of things I’ve learned over time. The hard way in some instances. First, never give up who you are for someone and second, allow yourself time to be sure the person you’ve falling in love with is really there, and, if you they are, that they’re able to be fully present as real intimacy expands its reach.

– Giving up who you are would be?

– For me it would be, say, someone doesn’t like that I’m a writer or love to read or that I jump into the fray when I see someone’s rights are being denied.

– And people being who they really are? Allowing intimacy?

– There’s healthy compromise and there has to be in relationship, but if you begin to give up the essentials of who you are, resentments build, the relationship becomes toxic and then you’re done. As for people being who they really are or being able to continue to be present when the intimacy becomes real on all fronts… Sometimes I think people present themselves as someone they’re not, not so much because they want to be deceitful or dishonest, but because at some time being themselves openly was a dangerous undertaking. Connected to this, at least in my mind, is the person who flees, runs, disengages – you pick the word – when the relationship really begins to be fully intimate. Some run because when you are fully with someone it can feel as if your very existence is at risk. It’s not so, but God knows it can feel that way.

– Are you a runner?

– No. Other way around, there are times I should’ve disengaged and didn’t. And then, one more thing.

– And that is?

– In order for any relationship of any kind to be a healthy one, each person needs to be who they really are safely with the other. Absent that, there’s no point.

– And so when it comes to you falling in love again?

– (Smiling) If there is the possibility of being in a loving healthy relationship with someone, I don’t want to miss it. Cool?

– Cool. Thank you.

 

Finding Lisa

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If you’ve had some luck in life (and I hope you have) some extraordinary people have been in your life. Sometimes years may pass without connecting with them.  If and when you do reconnect, and discover the bond remains unbroken, you realize how delicious and beautiful life can be.

It seems I’ve had some luck. Yesterday I spent nearly three hours on the phone with Lisa and the bond between us is clearly unbroken. I’d been trying to find her for some time with little success. Finally, it occurred to me, why not write to her old address? The place she lived when we were first connected in life, when we were boyfriend and girlfriend, when she was 15 and I was 17.

It worked!

While the fact we genuinely loved each other may not seem particularly special (it was) or come as a surprise, we were also friends. We genuinely liked each other.  We really talked, valued each others opinion. We pursued what interested us, even if others may not have understood. If you’d been looking for us in June 1972, say, you would have found us hunkered down in her family’s garage watching the Bobby Fischer vs, Boris Spassky word chess championship. We watched every single game and loved every minute of it.

One of the things that joined us back then was neither one of us were (or are) followers. We very much marched to the beat of our own drums and we were lucky enough to notice our rhythms matched. Neither of us had to sacrifice self in order to connect in life.

I suppose I should not have been surprised to hear she has the same voice. It has an enchanting quality. A reality that makes her very-direct and very funny sense of humor even more entertaining, and adds a layer of solidity when her formidable levels of intelligence, compassion and perception are on display.

During our conversation yesterday I thought, No wonder I fell in love with her. I thought of the line in the Jackson Browne song, “Hold On Hold Out,” I love you. Well just look at yourself…what else would I do?

It didn’t take very long in yesterday’s conversation to realize Lisa is still someone I very much love, like, and deeply respect. For all of us the glass of life is half empty and half full. Yesterday I was reminded how absolutely wonderful the half full part is. A joyous reality if ever there was one.

Love ain’t easy, but…

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Fully giving and accepting love is not always the easiest thing to do. It can be downright scary for understandable reasons given the rough sledding so many of us of have gone through in life. However, as far as I’m concerned to love and to be loved is life’s most precious gift. Especially love between people. I make a point of singling out love between people because,  if you’ll permit me the use of a cliché (there’s a reason it is a cliché), love is everywhere.  To wit, I love books, good writing. There are written passages so beautiful they bring me to tears; I’d hold them in my arms if I could. There’s music I love. Music so beautiful my heart beats faster and sweet-shiver chills run up and down my spine. And then, of course, nature herself. Nature is the whole of life and love is a part of the whole. Love is nature’s finest creation, the ability to give and receive love,  its most singular reward.

For the so many of you (and I am in your number) whose hearts and souls are bruised and bloodied by love lost, by the absence of love, by the slings and arrows of those so damaged they’ve come to believe they are incapable of healthy love, by those so internally mangled and misshapen they are, in fact, cruel, I say to you, don’t lose hope. The wounds of history deserve only so much decision making power. Our histories teach us caution. Good. Yes. They teach us to have  the patience to discover what is real and what is not, what is true and what is false. Good. Yes. But they do not deserve so much decision making power they make us shut down, enact the off switch.

So, my dear reader. Give yourself permission to love and receive love knowing that no love between people can be if we do not accept each other and ourselves for who we are. Again, no love between can be if we do not accept each other and ourselves for who we are.

And then there is this ineffable truth; you deserve to be loved and you deserve to give love. Perhaps in this moment you are unclear on this or don’t believe it. Perhaps you’ve been so thoroughly pulverized by the brutality in life you think it impossible. Perhaps you grapple with a combination of all of these. Well, I’ve got good news. Because it may feel impossible does not mean it is impossible, it means that’s how it feels. Because you may, at this moment, be unclear, does not mean clarity is not there for you to discover – it is. And because, right now, you don’t believe it does not mean it is not worthy of belief. Consider, for a few moments, the content of the last sentence which comes right now.  This piece was written, with love, for you.

The Courage to Love

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Maybe I am a foolish dreamer but I believe love – real love – is very likely the greatest gift life offers us. I think if you are afforded the possibility of real romantic love you are, well, a fool if you allow things like a single tattoo (which I don’t have) or facial hair (which I do have) to be deal breakers. You are equally foolish if you let the size of a woman’s breasts or the length of her legs guide your decision making.

It seems to me many have a plethora of reasons, some conscious, some not so conscious, for avoiding real love. What is his or her schooling? Have they been to college? What did his or her parents do for a living? She or he has a child already? He or she has been married before? She or he is five feet tall? Six feet tall?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the human species is ineffably gifted at coming up with reasons to avoid real love. I remember many years ago going out with a woman for a brief time. We liked each other and all was going well and one evening over dinner she said, I’ve been meaning to ask, what sign are you? Not seeing the bear trap on the ground in front of me, I said, Libra. A look of unutterable horror came over her face. Oh Peter, she said, in a tone so troubled you’d have thought every one she knew just died, We don’t get along. Instantly realizing I was facing a mountain that called for oxygen tanks to summit, I said, What the hell we been doing up to now? She shook her head, put her fork down on the table and said, I should go. I agreed. She left. I finished my meal.

Now I know there are underlying reasons for why we run from or avoid the possibility of love. Nearly always these reasons are found in the soil of our histories. We’ve been wounded before, we’ve been betrayed before. We’ve turned our hearts loose before only to have them gutted. In some instances we were raised in ways that taught us we weren’t much worth loving. So, if you find yourself falling in love, or faced with the possibility of falling in love and being loved, just think, if you run, your history wins – again. Your history does not deserve that kind of decision making power. You do.

If You Need Me

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If you need me, I’ll be there, with kind arms waiting, no furrowed brow for you.

Daylight comes and daylight goes, dreams seem to do the same, but I tell you

If you need me, I’ll be there, bringing you a cup of tea sweetened with a smile

From me because you are you and that’s all you need to be

If you need me, I’ll be there.  In coming storms or in the thick of pain, during times

Of hunger and lost hopes and lives, I’ll be there, in your dreams, in your heart always

If you need me, I’ll be there, in the song of the morning birds, the early day sun glowing

Warmth into your heart, because I love you, you know that, I am there, you can hug me

If you need me, I’ll be there, in the quiet and in the loud, in the darkness and in the light

In the rhythm of your footsteps in the morning and in the night I am there always

If you need me, I’ll be there, because you are you and that’s all you need to be

In life and past it, I’ll be there, loving you, always, because you are you and I am me