On Love

There are those who find the phrase "Love is the answer." to be simplistic or trite.  I understand this sentiment.  When difficult times befall us and we want a solution to our financial problems or our health issues or problems with our family or living situation, "love" just doesn't seem like what we need at that moment.  We need money.  We need medicine.  We need to fix our parents or our kids or ourselves.  We need to move out or move in.  We need "real solutions" to real problems, not platitudes.

If I took all the emotional pain I have ever felt in my entire life, I know that there are people in this world who have experienced far worse in just a single day.  There are experiences so heart-wrenching that I cannot fathom what it must feel like to go through them.  So I get it.  "Love is the answer"  seems to fall short for someone who just lost a child or left part of who they were on some far-away battlefield or languished in prison for something they did not do.

But, what is the alternative?

Someone far wiser than I told me to try this, so I did:  The next time you feel like your situation is utterly hopeless, take just a moment and close your eyes.  Take three deep breaths.  In your mind's eye, picture your heart as a locked door.  Now picture it opening.  Imagine the fresh air and light that enters through it is love.  Stay there for a few moments, for a few moments respite may be all you have at first.  But it gets better.

Love is not the end; it is the beginning.  It is the well from which all healing springs.  It is the only place to start and without it, we are lost.

INSIGNIFICANT

Once, when I was sixteen, I was upset about something...not sure what.  Girlfriend?  Parents?  Maybe just some adolescent existential angst.  So I drove.  Fast.

That is what I used to do when I did not know what to do.  Drive fast.  I drove until I reached the shore.

I wish it was just like that, the road ending at the water's edge, forcing us to face our past by bringing us to where we came from.  But it isn't like that.  The roads bend and turn at right angles just when we have almost arrived.

We are left to take the extra step (or steps).  So I did.  I parked my mom's 1976 Malibu Classic, took off my shoes and walked to the water's edge.  It was Autumn.  The air was chilly.

I remember, now (the feelings, not the cause).  I was not upset; I was distraught.  I remember crying, standing in ankle-deep, bone-chilling cold.  I remember the pull of it as the  water receded back into the Atlantic , leaving my feet a little deeper in the wet sand.  I remember thinking, "It (the sea) wants me back."  I wanted to oblige.

After a bit, I turned and walked, aware of the earth beneath my sandy feet.  I sat cross-legged in the sand and looked to the stars and asked God for answers to questions I do not remember.  I looked out at the dark horizon where deep indigo was met by black and for the first time in my life, truly noticed the curve of the earth.

I also noticed that my tears had dried and the turmoil I was in was replaced with calm.  I remember thinking, "I am a tiny creature on a floating, spinning sphere in an unimaginably vast universe.  My worries are of little consequence in the grand scheme of things."

I should spend more time at the beach.

Not Real

"Facts" fostering fear,
Worst-case scenarios present themselves as certainties to,
My  muddled mind,
So hungry for something to fill it,
Forgoing the "healthy snacks" and,
Opting instead for,
Four cans of Pringles

Anti-butterflies,
Haunt my gut.

None of this is real.

I know this,
Because,
I invented it.