Category Archives: falling in love

It Is Always

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In the soft-sweet chambers of the dreaming human heart, hope draws its finest breath. There, in the rhythmic blood-flow butterfly-filled moment, the bond begins. There the ineffable connection between two people, exquisite as the diamond-lacing of morning dew on a blade of grass, all the fathoms of the soul strong, is born. There ,love begins, and, if we stay out of its way, grows. It is life and death’s finest gift. It is always.
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ON RELATIONSHIPS: I STILL BELIEVE

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Someone asked me recently if I still believed in the possibility of a truly wonderful and loving romantic relationship. They seemed somewhat surprised when, without hesitation, I said I did. But look at what you’ve been through, they exclaimed, pointing to parts of my history that can understandably be seen as potential impediments to my ability to believe a loving romantic relationship is a possibility in life.


Well, I said, If I were to give my history that kind of control, then it would still be damaging me, now wouldn’t it? I don’t think it deserves that kind of power, do you?


No, they said. But do you really think being swept off your feet, you know, all that heart pounding stuff, the butterflies and all, you really think that’s possible?


Of course, I said. It’s part of nature. Nature is life and life happens to us whether we like it or not. If you are walking in the rain, the rain hits you doesn’t it? It doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your history, how old you are, how tall or short or thin or fat. No bigotry in nature. The thing is to be brave enough to accept life, and sometimes I think accepting the beautiful miraculous things in life, like falling in love with someone and their falling in love with you, is scarier than the frightening things.


Why?


Because if it is going to work, to flourish, you have to be willing to be you fully in the relationship. So if the all of you is present, it can feel like the all of you is at risk. Equally important, you have to be willing to allow the other person to be who they are. People are always going around trying to abbreviate each other without even realizing it. Like you fall in love with the entire person and then when they feel the same way you get terrified and then, usually without realizing it, you try and pare them down into a Reader’s Digest version of themselves, no offense to Reader’s Digest, by the way.


You baffle me.


Get in line. Look, my closest friend in the world is deeply in love with a wonderful woman and she is deeply in love with him. And he is older than I am. People spend so much time worrying about life, what will or won’t be ,that they forget to live it. These two live their lives together, and therein lays the wonder of it all.


Meaning?


I see relationships all over the place where the two people might be together, but they aren’t sharing life together. People in marriages or live-in relationships where the only thing they really share in life is the bills, if that. It’s heartbreaking.


And what about Gay marriages, the opposition to Gay marriages?


Oh, please. The opposition to Gay marriages is rooted in ignorance, which far too often is fueled by hatred. Hatred is a major fuel for ignorance and vice versa, you ask me. I was friends for quite a few years with two women that were a couple. Man, let me tell. you They really loved each other. I mean adored each other. They worked together, owned a business together, cared deeply about each other. If people were able to see a relationship like that for what it really is, two people that really love each other, and maybe stop giving their histories or antiquated belief systems so much control over them, maybe they would grow a little. I mean is there too much love going on between people these days?


And what do you mean when you talk about sharing life as opposed to – ?


I mean what is the point of simply being tenants in each other’s life?


No point.


I think the joy of a relationship, the pay off if you will, is to be able to share life together. Obviously, individuality is important; you don’t give up who you are for another person. But I can think of things that I dream of, like seeing the Grand Canyon or going to Germany and standing in a room where Beethoven lived and other things that I’d love to share. That’s the wonder of it. And share too what she loves. It’s heartbreaking when you see two people together who are so over yet they are afraid to declare their independence. Sad shit for sure.


So you still believe.


Of course… why shouldn’t I?

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LOVE YOU BROTHER

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Remember to say I love you to those you love. I don’t know what it is about those three often maligned and misused words, I love you, that makes them as special as they are, but I do believe that when they are meant, they should be said. Not only to the many who deserve to hear it, but by the many who deserve to say it.

My friend Frank died at 7:35 yesterday morning with the two he loved and who loved him the most by his side. Like many others, I loved Frank. And whenever I’d say, Love you Frank, he’d smile at me and say, Love you brother. And I knew he meant it. I can still hear his voice saying those words to me, Love you brother. He meant them too, all three of them.

The words I love you are remarkably hard for some of us to say. For still others, they are difficult to hear. Still others avoid the phrase because it is has been used as a tool for manipulation and, in some cases, cruel manipulation, in too many scenarios.

However, I think the only necessary guideline for saying it is honesty. Say it if you mean it. Your history, those who betrayed you, used the phrase to manipulate you in one way or another, denied your ever hearing the phrase, none of these people deserve so much control over you today that they stop you from saying it at all.

A woman I love very much said to me recently, “Peter, you love everybody.” Not true. Not by a long shot. Rest assured, there are people I don’t love and there I even people I dislike, some intensely. But what I do believe in is letting those you feel love for know it. While there is certainly such as thing as too much hate in the world, there is no such thing as too much love. However, there is such a thing as not enough love – and not enough expression of the love that is there.

The first game the Yankees played after Yankee captain Thurmon Munson’s tragic death in 1979 was in Yankee Stadium against the Baltimore Orioles. The Orioles catcher was Rick Dempsey, a former Yankee and back-up catcher for Munson. The Yankee manager was Billy Martin. Dempsey sent a note to Martin in the Yankee clubhouse before the game. In it he told Martin that he, like so many others, loved Thurman and he, like so many of us, did not always remember to tell people he loved that he loved them. And so, in this note, he told Martin that he loved him.

And so if you love people in your life, whether you love them as friends or more, tell them. Use the words I love you – all three of them. I would ask the few of you who might feel saying I love you is a wimpy thing to do why saying it is so hard for you to do? Were it an act of weakness, to say them, it ought to be easy, no?

Take care of yourselves in life. Love each other as best you can. And when you do, say so.

I am going to miss you terribly, Frank.

Love you brother.
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WE OUGHT TO JAIL FEAR

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I live in fear every day. Some days more than others. Like the London fog, it rarely leaves. And when it does leave, it hasn’t gone far. Fear can be crippling. It is a master thief. It robs us of more than we realize.

An extraordinary song by Marc Cohn, an e-mail exchange with a loved one, and a recent discussion with a group of trauma survivors has me pondering the presence of fear in far too many lives. Like the song, “One Safe Place,” by Mr. Cohn reminds us, we all deserve a sanctuary.

Life happens to us whether we like it or not. Life, unlike people, knows no bigotry. It visits all of us. It brings us its greatest rewards if we stay open to them: the love of a fellow human being, the joy of loving another human being, the sweetness of a soft morning mist, a baby’s laughter, a piece of music that sends chills of joy riding up and down our spine and wets our eyes. Life brings fear too. There is a Life Growth phrase that says, It’s okay to be afraid, don’t let is scare you. The phrase seeks to help someone discover they have a relationship with the fear and thus have some say in the relationship. The idea is to wrest as much decision making power from the fear as possible by going towards and through the fear. Believe me, I am not always able to do it. But when I do, the results are not as horrifying as I thought they would be.

Not long after I was shot in the head in 1984 I was held up again at gunpoint and did what any sane person would do, I retreated into my home and did not leave it for nearly one year. Fear had me by the throat. It robbed me of participation in the world around me. How did I get free of it, at least to the point I could leave my home? Acceptance. Acceptance does not, I repeat, does not mean giving in to it. The equation goes like this; you have to accept it in order to manage it and you have to manage it in order to get free of it. You have to go through it.

We can be a spoiled lot at times. We want short cuts. Smokers want to defeat the cigarrette habit with a patch, hypnosis, nicotine gum, or accupuncture (I’ve always thought there should inaccupuncture too. Fairness, you know). In other words, they want to kick the habit without going through the experience of, well, kicking the habit (bet you didn’t see that coming).

There are some common sources of fear: violence, disease, death, loss of employment, end of relationship, of marriage, and so forth. But there are other fear-laden landscapes where the master thief robs more from our lives: fear of loving someone fully and allowing someone to love you. Fear of following your dreams: going back to school, picking up some paints because you’ve always wanted to paint, learning how to play an instrument because you think you’re too old or lack talent, and so forth.

We ought to jail fear every chance we get. The only way to jail it is to move through it. Will it be easy? No.

Hear me. You go through the fear and you will come out the other side. You will notice that you made it. You’re still breathing. It didn’t kill you (that’s what we think it wants to do, isn’t it?). You are alive and face to face a new kind of glory – you. Each time you go through the fear you erase more and more of its ability to control you and rob you of your dreams in life. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll paint that painting, play that instrument, love that person and let that person love you. Impossibilities become possibilities. And one of the last things in the world that deserves to rob you of your dreams and your possibilities is fear.

Remember, it’s okay to be afraid, don’t let it scare you. Remember to live.
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FALLING IN LOVE

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Falling in love is an experience many of us hope for, yet, when it happens, doubting and second-guessing begin in earnest. For many of us, wen it comes to falling in love, the ability to allow it to happen is fragile at best.

There all kinds of theories about what falling in love is. In an article in Discovery, Professor Arthur Aaron from State University of New York at Stonybrook says, falling in love is, in part, rooted to our innate desire for self-expansion. Reading that made me immediately check my waistline. You can’t too careful.

Italian sociologist Francesco Alberoni, according to one article, believed falling in love “is a rapid process of destructuration-reorganization called the nascent state. In the nascent state, the individual becomes capable of merging with another person and creating a new collectivity with a very high degree of solidarity. Hence the definition: falling in love is the nascent state of a collective movement formed of two people only.” Moreover, “In order to understand if someone is truly in love, the individual must be put to truth tests and, in order to find out if he or she is loved in return, the beloved is also put to reciprocal tests. The incandescent process of the nascent state through these tests gives way to certainty and produces a stable love relationship.”

Reading that made my hair hurt and my eyes glaze over. No offense, Mr. Alberoni.

I am not about to say I have the answer. But I can tell you what I do believe. I believe falling in love is an experience rooted in nature itself. It is not about thought, reasoning, or intellectual agility. Moreover, over thinking and over analyzing has derailed more than one instance of true love. In fact, they play a large part in why so many of us get tangled up in doubt and second-guessing; we inflict the intellect on something that doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the intellect.

Falling in love is a gift from nature itself, It is about emotion, spirituality, and feelings. There is a good reason why feelings are feelings and thoughts are thoughts. They are not the same thing!

Doubting love, doubting that you are falling in love often comes from earlier wounds in life. Many if us have grown to be understandably afraid we will be wounded again. Sometimes we are still under the spell of earlier life messages that told us we were unworthy of anything wonderful in life. Messages that are, by the way, bullshit.

Falling in love is very much like experiencing the breathtaking glory of a sunset or sunrise; it is like the mystical majesty of early morning clouds lifting off the mountaintops; or the quaint delicacy of early morning dew on the front lawn, when every blade of grass glistens in the cool morning air. When you experience any of these wonders, there is no discernible gap between seeing it and experiencing it. It happens all at once. You don’t need thought to know it. You just need to be open to it. It is the same with love, with falling in love.

One final thought, falling in love can be very scary, particularly for the far too many of us who have been wounded in life. This is why I agree with Professor Aaron when he said, “(K)indness is the strongest indicator for a successful long-term relationship.”

Remember, kindness, like love, is not about thought, reasoning, or intellectual agility either. Like love, kindness is about emotion, spirituality, and feelings. That is why they go together, and why, if you are blessed enough to have discovered both, you have not just fallen in love, you are on your way to being in love, and that, my dear reader, is the greatest gift of them all.

There is a line in a Bruce Springsteen song that says, “God help the man who doubts what he’s sure of.” Women too.