I am a look back sort of guy, my life has been a rich blessing. I have been blessed with passion, and power, and experience, and nothing can compare to how great that has made my 38 years. I was writing on my other blog about love, and I thought I would talk about it a little bit here.
I think one of the most important things in our health is willingness, the openness of our soul. The soul feeds the brain, and the brain feeds the body, or something like that. And love is the jet fuel to our soul. But, as we all know, some of us love destructively, or violently, or selfishly. All of these are selfish, and scared, and the rest.
We love based on our models, and what we know. If we know fear in our lives, we love scared. We love with a sort of sense of desperation of a hungry dog, always waiting for the other person to declare there love, in case our love is not reciprocated. But, that is not love. That is score keeping.
I have been in love with three women in my life. All three I have made giant mistakes, but I know that I loved them amazingly fully, and passionately, and my love was never compromised. The relationships were, and they all failed, but I loved them all. And the cool thing, I still love each of them completely, without question or reservation.
I have loved one of these women literally my whole life. She tells me we knew each other in grade school, but I am not going for that. I say that I met her in high school. Who knows. We connected one night at my friend Steves soccer game at Kennedy Park. He was dating a girl, and this other girl came to the game to watch. We ended up sitting there talking through the whole game. After the game, and long after dark. Right there, it never got old. And I was a high school teen boy. Who was easily distracted. And I never thought to leave. I remember it to this day. It felt right. It felt the way I had always wanted to speak to someone, and have them speak back. It was a really amazing sense of connection, right through the talking. And, we never even kissed, we just talked.
We dated, and all of the rest. I did bad things. It was bad, and I was the worst boyfriend ever. But, I never, ever wanted to not talk to her. Never. No matter what, we could talk for ever, for days at a time. When we were not dating, we still talked, and talked and talked. Her friends hated me, and I earned that, but we talked constantly. And no one, not ever, have felt that good to me.
Even today, as grown ups, when we talk as friends, I never want to stop talking. It is easy, and funny, and serious when it needs to be. It is amazing. The rhythm, the patter, is amazing. She is one of the greatest blessings.
I spent my college years with one girlfriend. And, I learned another sort of connection from her. We do not talk now, as we have grown apart. But, as our class reunion approaches, I am left to think about her. We have become friends in a new way, from a distance over email and the like. It is a interesting connection. When we were together, we were in our 20s, and the world was on fire for both of us. We were both learning who we were going to be as adults, sort of setting the language for our lives. We grew amazingly, and as such, we talked it all through. We had that amazing language of experience. We were on different paths, but we walked holding hands like a couple does. I learned so much from her, and have a few things in my life to this day from those years, like my Neti Pot.
The thing with that is, there are parts of my life now, that I do not get to share with anyone like I would like. Like any good angst ridden immature man, I think that there are parts of me that people will not get. But, I never felt that with her. There was some of it that she did not understand, but she never questioned my need for it, or failed to support it. She was always a large cheerleader, even for the insane stuff. And now, in my life, there are things that I still, to this day think that I would love to talk to her about, but do not have that chance. So I am left just telling the dog about it.
I mean, I watched hte USA v. Italy today, and all I could think about was the amazing strategy the Italian setter was taking on, but I do not know who to talk to about that.
And the third woman came at the end of my 20s, and early 30s. When I was learning to, or trying to be an adult male. It was one of those long term relationships that naturally build to marriage, but in my case of immaturity, it did not. But, the journey that she and I took was one of great power. We built a circle of friends like you do, we had friends that we spent time with like an adult couple. It was an amazing time. We shared so many years, and so many hardships that we were powerfully connected. This, like the others, was a bad break up. I am sure I did bad things. Years later, she and I reconnected, and we talked a lot.
I think that love costs nothing. Love can never harm us. Loss of love does not harm us. It does not even hurt us. The power of loving someone is so strong, and true, we as humans seek to make it into something that it is not…when it leaves. We never stop loving someone. If we loved them at all. That love is always there, as that person is the same person. We love in that moment, and to keep that love in our heart costs nothing. In fact, it allows us to have the stoke (coming soon) in a stronger way.
I have been blessed to love three women. I love them still to this day.
I hope we all work to open our hearts up to the people around us. It costs you nothing, and you are strong enough to be in control. I hope we all can love fully. We are all loveable…even this guy…
