I love love. My heart swoons at signs of affection. When I see bids for genuine connection, heartfelt and raw, I get lost in awe. Do you know that sensation? Witnessing or experiencing something profoundly beautiful and earnest that strikes so deep it takes your breath away?
We’ve (humans) have lost feeling, the numbness is creating grave disconnection. We’re losing connection with what matters – love. The love that moves through our veins has been minimized, replaced by self-obsession, greed, commercialism and a lack of perspective.
If I’m honest, I’m not good at displaying love, and I feel sad about it. I want to be. I want to be touchier and more generous with affection. The truth is that my own hurts hold me back from being open and vulnerable. It’s not a conscious thing, I just feel agitated and want to pull inward when I’m met with too much tenderness. I might rationally understand this, but the physical response I feel is so entrenched in my make up it’s hard to change.
I’m better than I was, and I’m super tender with my daughter and her friends, but in my rawest adult connections I’m known for being withdrawn and some might say cold. ☹
Love is what breaks down conflict, removes plaque from stale relationships, and inspires softness and empathy. It’s one of the most beautiful things to witness, so why not practice it daily in small ways.
Our lives are filled with opportunities to experience love in all forms, such as:
- Witnessing the waking moments in a baby’s eyes.
- Enjoying sunshine peeking through a cloudy sky.
- Hearing the call of crows in the winter.
- Reading a poem that lights your heart.
- Receiving an unprompted text from a friend telling you how much you mean to them.
- Telling your lover, in a random moment, what you love about them.
- Seeing your dog’s excitement when you walk in the door.
- Admiring the dusting of snow on the streets and the black imprints tires leave on freshly fallen snow.
- Being kind to someone you don’t know.
- Smelling coffee as it percolates first thing in the morning.
- Watching someone do something really beautifully, something that takes a lot of effort but they make it look effortless.
So many things can provoke a feeling of love or awe, and when the moment takes your breath away you’re deeply connected to yourself simultaneously. That’s connected love. Every day there are endless opportunities to experience awe. Whether it’s BIG awe like seeing your partner do something that you feel proud of or the soft glow of an early spring sunset kind of awe.
These experiences require us to be present, out of our thoughts, just for a moment. We need enough time to actually see, hear, touch, taste, smell and breathe. Enough moments of gentleness.
When the perspective is always looking inward, thwarted by self-expression instead of self-love, we become shells of our humanness.
The ‘secret’ to a joyful life, it’s all the small moments. Waiting for moments of grandeur or waiting for ‘when this happens’ to see beautiful things, experience awe, or feel grateful is lame, and those moments never come. If we don’t take the time daily to see what’s good and right with the world, we’ll become absorbed in seeing what’s wrong with the world. Then we live a life that feels hard and depressing.
Make it a habit to see what’s good, everyday. See the possibilities instead of the challenges, and we’ll all become better for it.
xo, Noelle