First let me address the sub header. The column did not land in your in box at its normal time of 9:55 AM PST because I had a week that emotionally I needed to catch up to. I felt a bit like I was in lag, like a glitch where you in theory know about the feelings, and you are experiencing them, but they are so new and precious, paper can’t hold them yet. As this column is about my sometimes traipsing, often bulldozing, hopefully more often dancing, through my life, there are moments like today where the words took a minute to get dislodged from a sea of possible feelings, to a place where I could muddle through the muck of terrifying meets deliriously hopeful. I received news this week that a diagnosis was clear. I was randomly texted that someone who didn’t show up for a call died. I dressed my daughter for her senior prom and felt in the back of my throat the shift of her leaving for college coming soon.
I have also dipped a toe into a place I haven’t been in some time.
The capacity and tangibility of falling in love.
We fall in love in many different ways. We fall in love with a new hobby, or a new band. We fall in love with cooking or a favorite restaurant or a new pet. We fall in love when we see our child for the first time.
We also fall in love with friends, co-workers, people that we may not even know a lot about. We love to see them occasionally because there is a connection, a smile, that says, ‘We exist on this planet.”
But the plunge into romantic love is like nothing else. It holds a potency of risk and reward. The essence of romantic love can be breathtaking in all its promises of an intimacy that is intermingled with friendship, sexuality and homesteading. Sure, alone time is wonderful, solo traveling can be soul opening, but nothing beats that look you can give someone who knows you and they laugh, or that held hand, or comparing avocados for ripeness or listening to a shared favorite song. If you are coupled, look over at your partner right now. Okay, so they are picking crust out of their nose or doing that annoying thing with the pen, but really remember… they bring you shivers up your spine and kiss you like no one else can. Get up from your seat, walk across the room and hug them. Not some lame shoulder hug. Like really hug them, and think about the gift of falling in love. It doesn’t have to just happen once, it can happen over and over and over if you are open to it. Romantic love is the intermingling of all the parts. The gasps, the tears, the laughs, the broken bread and the continued hope that a life line is extended for an infinite period of time.
What romantic love can do is give you hope if you allow it. If you can push away the past, all the cynicism, the bad thoughts about conflicts, and step into an evolution of love, then you will find within, a space that is so perfectly awing in its origin that you can become creative, motivated, distracted, longing, worried, nervous, excited and overthinking all in the same pot of feelings soup. Fertile ground for taking each emotion and knowing more about yourself and what you want and how tethering to this person can facilitate this deep dive into the pool of life’s trajectory.
When I wrote my LA Times piece on writing love letters, it was clear to me I have been a hopeless romantic my whole life shooting arrows that fell on the wrong ears. When you make a call out into the world, and you write that note that is perfectly held and received, nothing feels sweeter.
If you have zero interest in falling in love romantically, here are some ways I think you could get closer to the vibration where you may one day find yourself actually interested in this soul mate alchemist’s quest:
Fall in love with your own face. Every state and shape its in. Good light, bad light, exhausted, sun burnt, stressed, elated and focused.
Fall in love with a state of being. Enjoy quiet on a park bench in the sun. Sway to music in an outdoor arena. Take a bite of the most delicious sandwich in a new cafe.
Fall in love with a talent of yours and pat yourself on the back for it. I just wrote great column. That song I wrote is a hit. I crafted a beautiful mural on the wall.
Do a soul mate activation. As lame as that sounds to many people, vibrations and energy are everything. Stop with the lists of tall, fit, financially successful and lean into where you feel yourself with that person. Do you feel safe? Can they be trusted with your heart? Are they kind, funny, generous? And more importantly, are they looking for you?
People have told me I need to write a love story. I have written romantic screenplays. I have a drawer of them. Perhaps this is my beginning to that part of my writing. I can’t say it feels like an easy transition from self help but I know I could write essays about love and the complexities of trust.
Stay tuned…. I’m a work in practice.