Valentine Advice

       Have you ever noticed how the traditional gifts on Valentine's Day don't last?  Flowers die within days.  Candy is consumed, or melts, or is thrown away in a virtuous act of guilty avoidance.  Consider the attempts to hang on to these gifts.  What is less romantic than frozen candy?

     Consider the endurance of Valentine cards.  How many Valentines have you kept over the years?  How did you decide to keep that special one, or two?  Starting in grade school, Valentine cards have been counted, and tossed.  Their life in the cubbyholes of our bedrooms are generally shorter-lived than that bag of Halloween candy.  How different is it now?  How will you make your "valentine" to your loved one different this year from all others?

     If we want our love to last, we should definitely avoid durable goods on Valentine's Day.  ( If you have already bought you wife a washing machine for Valentine's Day, consider bestowing it upon her on Groundhog Day instead.)  I would even go so far as to say, avoid anything at all that is returnable.

     If we want our love to last,  we must find something that doesn't last, and cannot be exchanged for something else.  Something that is fresh, fleeting, ephemeral, delivered with whimsy and enjoyed spontaneously.   Something that must be reinvented anew each year.  Something that keeps our dearest wondering, "What is around the next corner?"

     Thinking of initiating a panicked online search or a frenzied shopping expedition?  Don't.   It may not exist in a store, not even a virtual store. Instead, look within.  Easy?  No.  Scary?  (You may now even be tempted now to rush out with the throngs and buy that candy and devour it yourself.)  Is lasting love easy?  No.  Is staying young at heart easy?  No.  No. No. No.  But say "Yes" anyway.

     You need no purchase as you approach your love on Valentine's Day.  It is about what you carry in your heart, that speaks of the moment, felt in that moment.  It is about giving the great gift of time and undivided attention, those precious commodities so hard to find and impossible to buy.  It means honoring that  young, free, ageless spirit.  It means cherishing the nuanced feelings that cannot be contained in a heart-shaped box.   It is about dipping deeply into the well, and sharing the eternal waters.  Splashing, sprinkling, showering, or tidal-waving -- your style, your moment to create . . . a water dance of the soul.

     And . . . a few flowers to go along with it all are never a bad idea.
 

The Power of YOU

     Don't underestimate the Power of YOU.  I'm back.
     I'm back after an extended Leave of Absence.   I left in an absence of hope, inspiration, or joy.  I had to go.   This blog is all about finding the joy, the wonder and the amusement in life.  I couldn't find it.  I couldn't write it.  I couldn't give it.   My readers could no longer find those weekly lifts, and so they left, too.  We were all gone, dear and departed.
      But words endure, and nowadays rest in peace somewhere in the ether.  My missives remained posted inspite of my silence,  and some of you found them.  Some of you found them uplifting, still, as they were frozen in time.  If it is real, if it is genuine, if it catches some truth in its lines, it will somehow still be found.  It will somehow still be read, and it will live.
     We, too, still live -- even through troubled times.  When we awake from our nightmares, gasping for breath, we know we are alive.  We breathe.  We open our eyes.  We face the day.  We find a blog with a byline that says, "Life teaches those with open eyes."  We know there is a reason for things.
     I'm back because of YOU.  I'm  back because one of YOU found this blogsite, read the words here, and felt something.  Call it inspiration.  Call it reconnection.  I call it intuitive.  This reader was someone I knew in a previous lifetime, not so very long ago.  It was a time that seemed perfect.  It was a time when I had a previous job, a previous career, a previous husband and only the distant rumblings that there was more to me that what appeared  and more of life that must be lived.  This reader didn't just read. This reader felt and believed in what she felt.  This reader lifted the phone and called me.  She told me how beautiful my words were.  It was her words that were truly beautiful, don't you see?
     How did she know it was the perfect time to lift up the phone?  She had no way of knowing that a reconnection was exactly what this writer needed on exactly this day.  She could not have known that I had just experienced a wrenching loss of friendship at one of those points in life when you need a friend more than ever.  But she knew something, and she lifted the phone.  
     I pulled over to the side of the road to take that call.  I came home, fired up my computer and found my own blog again.   I began to write --  for the first time in a long time.
     If you have greeted me here today, you too must have awoken to a curiosity about life and people, a search for the names for the nuances of life,  a quest of some sort.  We all seek the narrative that tells a little piece of our own story.
     What you must know, is that I am here because of you.  I am here because someone was seeking.  I am here because I am seeking, too.
     Don't underestimate the power of your words.  How often do we let things go unsaid? How often do we have a fleeting intuitive response, a knowledge that comes to us from we know not where?  Too often we kill our own inspiration before it forms on our lips.  We jump to our task list or hop into our car to go somewhere unimportant. Instead, I urge you to pay attention.  When someone inspires you, it is a treasure.   Don't bury it.    Walk up and introduce yourself.  Write that comment.  Send that note.  Lift that phone.  When the words tumble in your head, let them flow.  Little do you know at the time your profound and rippling effect.