Love Can’t be Measured
It is all love.
If that is true
love can’t be measured
It is all love.
That gives me no basis
for insecurity
All that is left
is curiosity and wonder and
love
Space—the Elusive Frontier
How many of you out there only slow down when you get sick? I know that is true for me. (Though I am still surprised when what I consider really busy people tell me they can’t believe how busy I am.) I said I was bored once last year and I shocked myself. I don’t think I’ve said that since I was in my 20’s. We are talking decades.
Low and behold, I got sick for a week at the end of March. I read two books, watched 5 movies, and still had plenty of pondering time. I hadn’t written anything for this blog in over two months. My “Musings” blog consists of thoughts I quickly right down when inspired. I need space to be inspired, and I hadn’t been giving myself that space.
After sitting around for a week, I came up with about 5 topics, many of which I have already posted.
The experience reminded me of the power of giving ourselves time—time to ponder, to rest, to grief, to play. When I give myself that time, I am continually surprised by the benefits I reap.
When is enough, enough?
My friend hit it on the head. “It is not about being ‘special’; it is about worth.”
How many of us desire to be special, whether it is through a partner, our friends, our job, our art, our possessions, or something else? When we want to be recognized as special, we are actually asking to be seen as worthy.
How many of us need ongoing reassurance of our worth? All the evidence we accumulated in the past is either not acknowledged, not seen as “true”, or forgotten…by us.
When is enough evidence enough?
It is enough when the “evidence” comes from our own self, rather than from others. How does that happen? I wish I had an easy answer. I know by pondering the questions, we create openings for our own answers. Answers that *will* be enough for us.
What happens if there is enough?
What a radical concept.
Many of us unconsciously believe if another person has an abundance of love, money, friends…whatever, that means we won’t have enough. How would our lives be different without that thought? Too often, when another person has what we feel we lack, we get envious, angry, or simply judgmental. We ask “Who are they to be so rewarded?” What we are really asking is, “Who am I to not be so rewarded?”
How would our lives be different if we rejoiced at another person’s good fortune to have what we desire? That might be a path to knowing we are enough.
Talk about a radical concept…
“The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it”
~Marcus Aurelius
Testing Reality—Theory vs. Facts
How many of us test our view of reality? By the time we have reached adulthood, most of us have pretty firm ideas about how the world works. The problem is, often those beliefs are based on what we think is happening, based on past experience, rather than what is really happening.
I recently went to a discussion of inclusion and exclusion. Several people spoke of situations they felt left out. However, when they actually talked to the people they perceived to be excluding them, they discovered their assumptions were wrong. In other words, their theory did not fit the facts.
How many times do we do that? Almost always, I would wager. If we approach situations with an air of curiosity about what is really happening, we stand a chance of changing old theories that keep us stuck.
Reality is usually kinder than what we are telling ourselves (our theories.) When you think about it, if our thoughts in our heads are making us feel bad, the chances of the facts making us feel worse are amazingly slim. There is a much better chance that the facts are kinder than our theories.
When we are willing to test our theories against reality, we often find our risk is beautifully rewarded. In fact, I’m going to do that right now. Wish me luck!
Addendum–I am happy to report that, indeed, in the case above, my theory was wrong and the truth was kinder than my thoughts. Yea!