All You Need Is Love

To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. – C.S. Lewis

Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you.  When you dare to reveal yourself fully.  When you dare to be vulnerable. – Dr. Joyce Brothers

Love me when I least deserve it, because that’s when I really need it. – Swedish Proverb

To love is to risk not being loved in return.  To hope is to risk pain.  To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. – anonymous

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly. – Sam Keen

I don’t wish to be everything to everyone, but I would like to be something to someone. – Javan

As my kids grow up, I’m constantly changing my mind about what my most important lessons for them must be.  It has been sharing.  It has been responsibility.  It has been compassion.  And I still believe that those things are important things for them to learn.  But I don’t think these are the most difficult to teach and I don’t think these are the lessons that will help them live the fullest lives.  I’m starting to realize that to live this life fully and to leave here with no regrets, we must all learn to love.  It sounds simple, but as my awareness increases and my experiences add up, I am beginning to think that giving all of your love away is the most difficult thing in the whole world.

I’ve always wondered why children can still love their parents, regardless of how their parents treat them.  It’s because children start out their life not afraid to love.  They have no reason to hold back with their love because love hasn’t burned them yet.  They give love to their parents because they feel it.  Not necessarily because the parents deserve it or even make it easy.  Children, in their innocence, express their feelings without worrying about how it makes them look or what the consequences might be.  But as we grow, we get hurt.  We love and we lose it.  We express it and get rejected.  We feel pain and over time we figure out that the pain came because love preceded it.

If life is going to be difficult whether I let myself feel every emotion or whether I try to protect myself and build walls all around my heart, why not just let myself enjoy love to the fullest?  And when I look back on the greatest moments of my life, they will be the ones when I loved someone and let them know it.  If I got the pleasure of feeling their love back, that will be icing on the cake.  But if they don’t reciprocate, it will not diminish the joy I received when giving the greatest gift I have.

You Can Put the Blame On Me

A man may fall many times but he won’t be a failure until he says someone pushed him. – Elmer G. Letterman

All blame is a waste of time.  No matter how much fault you find with another, and regardless of how much you blame him, it will not change you.  The only thing blame does is to keep the focus off you when you are looking for external reasons to explain your unhappiness or frustration.  You may succeed in making another feel guilty about something by blaming him, but you won’t succeed in changing whatever it is about you that is making you unhappy. -  Wayne Dyer

When you blame others, you give up your power to change. – Dr. Robert Anthony

I feel lighter this week.  I feel free.  I feel human.

In yoga, I can’t blame anyone except myself and this body I’m in if my practice is stale.  There’s no one to point a finger at except me.  My body had been feeling stiff and unfamiliar lately, but as I’ve put more energy into my yoga and brought my attention back to what it means to me and why I do it, I’m opening up and feeling like my old self again.  This is a tap on the shoulder to me saying that if I take responsibility, things will get better.

I’ve talked to several people lately who are unhappy with the circumstances of their lives.  Most of these people feel powerless and miserable because of things that have happened in their past and things that are happening now as a result.  I absolutely see myself in their faces.  I hear all the excuses and reasons why they believe things will never change, and I know I do the same thing.  I have been angry with some big players in my life story, and even God at times, but I am now ready to accept that this is my life and take the blame.

This phase I’m in has taught me that to step away from your old life and your old self is a great learning tool.  When I was in the midst of chaos and pain, I wanted it to be someone else’s fault and I wanted to believe that if they would just take responsibility, my life would get better.  But the one that should be taking the responsibility is me.  I don’t want to give away power over my life.  There are a lot of things I can’t control, but there are a lot of things I can.

I know someone who truly, deeply believes that his happiness completely depends on how much love he receives from his significant other.  He puts all of his attention on trying to figure out how to get her to love him more so that his life can be complete.  All this does is push her away.  It’s a carousel they can’t get off.  I’m so thankful that I am starting to see how much better life is when you realize that we are not perfect, and neither is anyone else who has or does love us.

Maybe its our expectations of love.  That whole thing about love is patient, love is kind… Love might be all those things, but the people who love us are not.  Taking a step back has helped me see that I have loved completely, but I have done lots of things for the wrong reasons.  I have taken advantage of people who love me to help me get out of a place I didn’t want to be in.  I do blame myself for that and it feels strangely good.  I know that I’ve grown now and that all the confusion of my past is lining up to make more sense.

Taking responsibility is the first step in forgiveness.  Forgiveness is the door to happiness.  Happiness is the light that shines as kindness.  Kindness begets kindness and we would all benefit from that.

Scuttlebutt

There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it hardly becomes any of us to talk about the rest of us. – Edward Wallis Hoch

Be not disturbed at being misunderstood;  be disturbed rather at not being understanding. – Chinese Proverb

You don’t have to go looking for love when it’s where you come from. – Werner Erhard

I learned the word scuttlebutt this week.  In case you don’t know, it’s Navy slang for gossip.  My friend that taught me this word says she is not scuttlebutting anymore…and I’m trying to be right in there with her.  But I have to confess that it is pretty hard.  I try not to go around spreading rumors, for sure, but I definitely share the latest news with my very best friends.  But I know I shouldn’t…

I have had many times in my life that I felt I misrepresented myself and it was usually because something behind the scenes was going on.  I think when most people do something gossip-worthy, there is probably something the gossiper doesn’t understand that got them where they got.  It definitely makes people feel better about themselves when they hear of someone doing something they themselves would never do.  But as life goes on, I’m beginning to believe that I should never speak the words “I would never do that!”  Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t believe there are many people who do things to intentionally hurt themselves or anyone else.  I think that most people are searching for something in their own lives and sometimes get so desperate for it that they do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.  The need to be loved is probably the biggest reason we all make our mistakes.

I’ve searched for love behind lots of different doors.  There were some doors that opened to goodness and some that I wish I would’ve slammed shut before the rumors got started.  But lessons were learned, so I just moved on.  I’m definitely still on my search, but I do know that if I can love myself and the creator of this universe the most, I won’t make nearly as many mistakes.  In turn, my tolerance of others and their mishaps or unpopular actions will increase and I might not even feel the need to scuttle my butt over to tell anyone the news.

Open Up

When one door closes, another opens.  But we often look so regretfully upon the closed door that we don’t see the one which has opened for us. – Alexander Graham Bell

Become a possibilitarian.  No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see possibilites – always see them, for they are always there. – Norman Vincent Peale

Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier. – Charles F. Kettering

My friends who aren’t into yoga yet always think it’s funny when they hear me say something about trying to be more open in my poses.  Traditionally we think of the word “open” as representing a place of nothing…an empty space…a black hole, perhaps.  And I suppose that is what we’re referring to in yoga, too.  You create more open space around you when you become more flexible and create deeper expressions of the postures.

But, to me, yoga is always a metaphor to something about my life.  And being open in poses helps me to be more open in my mind.  Wayne Dyer says that being open to anything is the first secret to success and inner peace.  I started trying to live my life this way a few years ago and it has changed me in so many ways.  I never understood how many unspoken rules I had running around in my head about what was acceptable for my life.  I had so many expectations of myself that it made it difficult to really figure out who was inside of me.  I also had so many expectations of others that it made it difficult to be the best friend and the best citizen of the world that I could be.

Being open has helped me to understand all different kinds of people better, which saves me a lot of energy and thought wondering why people do what they do.  I also think it helps me love deeper because I don’t have a lot expectations of people.  If they disappoint me, I’m open to the fact that maybe they don’t want my love and I can just move on.

There are lots things I never thought I would do that I’ve either now done, or would totally do someday.  This is freedom to me. It’s exciting to  know that life really is out there for me to soak up and experience in any number of ways.  I’m glad my life isn’t predictable and my future isn’t mapped out for me.  I love being open in my body, my mind and my heart.

Take a Hit

Ah, when to the heart of man was it ever less than a treason to go with the drift of things to yield with a grace to reason and bow and accept at the end of a love or a season. – Robert Frost

For after all, the best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain. – Henry Wadworth Longfellow

The main thing I remember from my one session of T’ai Chi classes was that if you are getting ready to be hit, don’t tense up and try to brace yourself, but loosen up and take it while you plan your next move.  Words I can live by!

Things definitely hurt the most when we try, in vain, to prevent them.  There’s a  lot we can control, but, like they say in the 12 steps,  I need to learn to accept the things I can’t.

I spent a lot of years trying to resist things that were inevitable.  I was super tense and uptight about it and thought that if I kept resisting, I could make it all better.  In the meantime, things got worse and now I have about a thousand more things to forgive, understand and work through than I would have if I had just taken the hit and planned my next move.

As I’m getting older, I’m learning not to dread things like I use to.  I usually wish I could live my life in fast forward through the hard times.  But really, each day holds something good for me.  I don’t think I’ve ever had a day that there was not one great moment.  I’ve had days with some pretty crappy moments, but they didn’t last any longer than the good ones.

Yoga has taught me to accept my body with its strengths and limitations.  Now life is trying to teach me that I can’t look back and regret all of my mistakes and misjudgements.  I have to accept what I’ve done and what has happened and love it just the same.

Bag of Hammers

We’re all lonely for something we don’t know we’re lonely for. How else to explain the curious feeling that goes around feeling like missing somebody we’ve never even met? – David Foster Wallace

The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us. – Robert Louis Stevenson

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul, and yet no one ever comes to sit by it. – Vincent van Gogh

I think there are many versions, but here’s how I remember this story.  Each of our problems, worries or painful experiences are a hammer and we carry them around in a bag all day long.  We get in a circle with any group of people and drop all of our hammers in the middle.  Then we get to go to that big pile of hammers and pick out any ones we want.  We would all still choose our same old hammers.

I got lonely today.  I got sad about it.  I cried.  But what I love about getting older is that I knew as I was crying that this would only last a little while and that I would feel better really soon.  I also thought of all my blessings as I cried and I felt immense gratitude for them.

Loneliness has been a recurring theme in my life.  But so has joy and happiness, success, friendship and love.  I am learning to accept the bad.  And I love it.  We just don’t escape this life without feeling something.  This isn’t a playground.  This is a classroom.  I consider myself a good student.

A friend told me today that I made the decision to be happy and I’ve done well with it.  She also reminded me that I made a choice to forgive the hardest thing I’ve had to forgive.  So now I feel like I can do anything with my life.

Coming out on the other side of hardship builds strength and resilience. Even just coming out on the other side of a bad day or a good cry does, too.  We’re always alone and we’re never alone.  It’s all in our perception…the kind of day we’re having.  Each day is different.  Each bag of hammers is different.  But we all learn what we need to learn in our own way.

You Can Run

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll discover will be wonderful.  What you’ll discover is yourself.  – Alan Alda

All men should strive
to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.
- James Thurber

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.  – Jean de La Fontaine

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.  – George Moore

I heard a yoga teacher say once that you shouldn’t try to open up too fast.  She said that it would do more harm than good and that it should happen gradually so your body has time to adjust.  I thought I was living my life that way…taking my time and learning things slowly…when I was ready for the lesson.  But lately my mind has been bombarded with this awareness about mistakes I’ve made and why I’ve done the things I’ve done.  I think big life changes bring on big realizations.

My latest one is about running away from my problems.  I can track this one down pretty easily.  There are two things to do when there’s a problem: fight or flight.  For the majority of my life, I have taken flight.  When I was a little girl and my parents were mad at me for something, I would take off out the door faster than a bullet.  There were several places I would go.  Either to my special hiding place outside, to my grandparents house who lived close by, or I would show up at a friend’s house and just pretend I wanted to play.  I would wait until I thought they had cooled down to come back home and face my consequences.

As I got older and began to develop relationships with boys, I would even take off running if I didn’t like the way that was going…and I mean I would literally run away.  I’m sure there are quite a few boys out there who think I am crazy.

When my youngest son was three, I was trying to change a tire and the car fell off the jack as I walked away.  When I looked around and couldn’t find him, I  thought he was by the car and that it had fallen on him.  So what did I do?  Of course, I took off running in the opposite direction as fast as I could possibly go.  I can’t explain it.  I wish I could.

I’ve done this in slower paced ways, as well.  I remember being so ready to get out of my hometown when I graduated high school.  All I could think about was starting this new life somewhere else with brand new people.  It was great, but I was still the same and I was still running.  So over the course of the past 20 years or so, I have moved to different towns and cities, I’ve lived in so many dwellings that I think I’ve lost count and I’ve never worked at the same place for more than three years at a time.

Now I find myself back where I started, still searching for whatever it is that I think I want and need.  As things start to change and I hear that voice in my head saying “Take off! Get the hell outta here!”, I’m trying my very hardest not to listen.  What I am looking for is not in some other town, or some other neighborhood or some other house.  What I am looking for is right here, wherever I am.  All the time.  I’m just taking my own sweet time finding out exactly what that is.

The How is the Who

O, happy the soul that saw its own faults. – Rumi

People of the world don’t look at themselves, and so they blame one another. – Rumi

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering. – St. Augustine

Know thyself. – Socrates

I can remember being in yoga class the first time a teacher said “The way you do anything is the way you do everything.”  I think I looked up from my pose at her to make sure she was serious and then secretly shook my head.  There was no way I was falling for this one.  But it stuck in my head and played like a broken record.  Everytime I did or said or thought something that I wasn’t crazy about, I would remember this quote.  Every time I felt that I had handled something well or thought the best of someone instead of the worst, I would remember it, too.  So I got super-confused about it.

When I would go to get my yoga mat, which was rolled up kinda badly and a little dirty from the mess in the back of my car, I would think “Crap…do I do everything like this?”  When I accidentally bumped someone with one of those huge race car shopping carts in the grocery store that I couldn’t maneuver, apologized, took their dirty look, and then got pissed off,  I would think “Surely, I do not do everything like this!”  When I felt that someone really close to me had disrespected me for the ump-teenth time and I did nothing about it, I thought “This cannot be the way I do everything!”  But, unfortunately, it was.  And maybe it still is…but I am working on it.

When I take a yoga class and the teacher has us in a pose that I don’t love a little longer than I want to be there, I try not to blame her anymore…I just try to breathe and take it as long as I can, honor my body and come out if I need to.  What’s the big deal?  When my kids don’t listen and disobey me, I try (and my trying isn’t always successful) to stay calm, give them a punishment and move on with my day.  When I get angry and say something cruel that I really didn’t mean, I try to cool down, apologize and let it go.

So this anything/everything  idea does seem to be true.  But the good news is, when you start to identify the things you don’t like about it, you have this new awareness of yourself and you can start to make positive changes.  I’ve always known the importance of body awareness, but it has only been in the last few years that I have come to realize how much self awareness can improve your life.  We waste a lot of time not liking things about ourselves, but not knowing how to change.  Taking the position of observer in our own lives can make the biggest difference.  What you’ll see is that there are things that need to change, but there are also things that are wonderful about you that you may not have appreciated before.  You’ll know and love yourself much more with an open heart and an open mind.

A Good, Hard Cry

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course.  Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word “happy” would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. -Carl Jung

One of my oldest and dearest friends in the world was sitting with me on my front porch.  I was telling her how horrible I look the morning after a good cry the night before.  I told her how, not too long ago,  I had to tell my morning yoga students that I was having an allergy attack because my eyes were so puffy and red from the previous night’s cryfest.  She was looking at me kind of funny, so I thought she was thinking I must be crazy to cry that hard.  This sad look came over her face and she said she hadn’t had a cry like that in a very long time.  She thought it was more sad that she hadn’t had a good, hard cry than it was that I had.  She suddenly realized that she had not been feeling any strong emotions, one way or the other.

It took me second…but I got it.  I have been feeling so many big emotions lately that all I’ve wished for was a little, calm boredom.  But hard times and sadness can also make us feel alive.  I’m feeling alive these days, no doubt.

So I started thinking about that quote by Carl Jung.  I have such a happy life.  I always have.  But, strangely, I have had a lot of sadness, too.  I can always smile through my tears because I’ve had enough tears to know that I will feel happiness again.  Maybe there is even comfort in understanding that life is predictable that way.  We know without a doubt that there will be sad times, and we know without a doubt that there will be happy ones, too.

I told a friend the other day how I’m grateful for even the worst of things that have happened in my life.  Of course, I never wish anything bad on anyone involved in my sad times, but the times themselves have taught me so much.  We both got it.  We would have no point of reference of how great this life is if it were always great.  And as much as life can hurt, and suck, and wear us down sometimes, it can also feel great, bring us joy and fill us up with love.

I can only hope that for each night there is a day for everyone and for every sad thing that chips a space inside, it opens up a space for more joy to enter.

What’s My Type?

Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle. – James Russell Lowell

Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed. – Corita Kent

Remember, no man is a failure who has friends. – It’s a Wonderful Life

I remember the first time someone called me a “Type A”.  I was so surprised because I did not see myself this way at all.  I wasn’t always the best student, I got in trouble a lot as a kid and I acted a little rebellious a lot of the time.  It just never occurred to me that I was giving off a perfectionist-type vibe because that was not how I was feeling at all.  So I began to observe myself from a diiferent perspective…trying to decide if I was, in fact, one of these people who had issues with time, money and dirt.

Oooohhhh, I did not like what I saw.

Admittedly, I do have an issue with time.  I HATE to be late.  I can be in the best mood ever and when I realize that I am running late, I get completely stressed out.  But I’ve always attributed that to having a military dad.  Living in a small town where everything was close, we always left the  house precisely 15 minutes before a scheduled event.  No exceptions.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner (except we called it breakfast, dinner and supper back then) were always at the same time.  If you missed it, too bad Ole Joe…go make yourself some peanut butter crackers or something.  Okay, scratch that off my list because there’s a good reason for that one.

Money…since I never had it growing up, I never thought it had any effect on me.  But in my “take a step away to look at myself” project I realized that I did have issues with money, but in a less than traditional way.  Rather than wanting to prove I had some or that my things were valuable, I would do the opposite.  I would brag about what a good deal I got on something…getting a compliment on something from Goodwill and thrift stores was the ultimate in my mind.   And even when I got older and had a little money to spend, I would get embarrassed if someone called me out on something I owned that may have cost a little too much.  Things were not looking very “Type B” for me.

Lastly, the dirt thing.  This one is trickier and may be my savior from that title I do not want to take.  As a kid, I had the messiest room you’ve ever seen and I despised taking a bath.  Gross…I know.  My parents would have to chase me around the yard to get me to come in for one.  My greasy hair in my fourth grade class picture will attest to this.  But since I bathe regularly now and my room is usually not so messy anymore, I guess I have grown out of it.  I do like things to be neat and organized and I can’t stand losing things because they aren’t in the right place, but I don’t obsess about not getting dirty.  My kids don’t always match and their hair gets really shaggy…so I’m hoping this gives me an out.

The only thing bothering me right now about this label, is that I am feeling a bit like a failure lately.  I committed myself for twelve years to something and I finally had to let it go.  It was well worth the fight and it was also well worth letting go of after I lost, but there is this little room inside that is disappointed in myself.  But if life really is just a succession of moments to live fully, then I just may succeed after all.  Yoga stresses being present and mindful in asanas and all you do, so maybe that is why I was so attracted to it.  I am getting better everyday at being where I am and enjoying what is in front of me.  I don’t look at others in my situation as failures, so I’m trying to cut myself the same slack I allow everyone else.  I think I’m going to consider myself an Type AB personality, live in the moment, give life my best and get on with it!