Are you falling in love? Something worth doing.

The Blessings of Literature by Jeffrey Beauchamp

Last year, I fell in love online.

A friend of mine told me about his friend—an artist I should check out—so I went to this guy’s website. Several hours later, I was still absorbed by this man’s weird, beautiful, and playful style of painting.

Jeffrey Beauchamp’s landscapes first captured me: what was going on here? Gorgeous light, complex scenes, and a simple punch: lovely. His figurative work was funny and powerful. It was clear that this guy likes his kids. And that he has a great sense of humor, at least in his work. I went to the nudes, and I was lost in the sensual shadows. The nine hands! Look at those hands. Oh, la, la! It is a wonderful collection of work and a telling story of this man. And the man himself is gorgeous. Did I mention that part?  This was something to get excited about.

I love all kinds of people, most of them in fact. But for me to fall in love doesn’t happen every day. I’m persnickety. But the totality of this work was definitely having this kind of effect on me. His sensibility, his humor, and the beauty he created…I was floating around.

Flash back 30-some years. I remember as a young girl, my big brother Danny taking me on the L to the Chicago Art Institute and standing before huge canvases of water lilies. Water lilies and light; water lilies and purple; water lilies and love. I was falling in love with Monet. As a teenager, I remember poring over the short words that the always-messy Hemingway wrote. I was fascinated by his relationships. I imagined him hungry and writing. I cried at the end, his tortured end. I had fallen in love.

As an adult, time and decorum dictate a more delicate approach. I often write people and tell them what I appreciate about their work. And I did so in the case of Jeffrey Beauchamp. He sent back a kind reply. When I looked him up on Facebook, I got a chance to see a few more glimpses of his life, including more lovely photos of him. And his wife. Well, yes, of course. I bet she’s amazing, too. And there they are with their excellent matching Halloween costumes. Them as a young couple. And him playing music, smiling, always smiling. How could you not love this man? But he had his life and I have mine and that, as they say, was that.

Quid Pro Quo Your Boat by Jeffrey Beauchamp

I never mentioned any of the falling in love with him part to him. Until now. (Both he and his wife, Emma, have been gracious about and unthreatened by my admiration.) But he didn’t really need to know about it. I only bring it up now because it makes my point.

And my point is that we’re made to fall in love with each other. With art. With the wind. With the tender parts and the wild parts. With the string of words that hits you between the eyes. With the crash of a wave on a boulder. It’s what we do. And when we stop falling in love, maybe it’s time to figure out why.

Have you found that painting or that song or that story, or that poem, or that sculpture or that garden or that crafted peacock or whatever it is that makes your heart open and sing and be so happy to be alive and be able to experience the wonders of another human being’s beauty? Of your own beauty?

Are you falling in love? Regularly? And if not, why not? It’s not as if there aren’t a million things to fall in love with.

Life worth living means falling in love. You know that old idea that we only use 10 percent of our brains? What’s the equivalent equation for our hearts? It all starts in the brain, you know, so maybe the other 90 percent is about falling in love? Could be. If we don’t use our hearts, will they wither away? Will we find ourselves wandering through days without remembering that a vibrant, expansive, and creative heart is ours for the making?

Falling in love means that you are open enough to let some of the world’s beauty penetrate and grow within you. Falling in love, we remember our own fire…glowing there all along. And we radiate that back into the world, ready to give someone else a reason to fall in love. Maybe it feels safer to call it an infatuation. Maybe a more palatable term would be to have interests or hobbies. Maybe some will want to quibble about what falling in love is. Quibble away. If you know this feeling I am describing, you can’t argue about it. Falling in love is one of the most delightful feelings in the human repertoire. We feel alive and happy and ready. We have great energy and a breezy way of getting things done. The world looks beautiful when we’re falling in love. And it is beautiful, you know?

Pomegranate by Jeffrey Beauchamp

Okay, falling in love can be rife with problems. We are so used to the idea that if we love something we have to have that thing. I’m not suggesting that you have to do anything about falling in love. Maybe just enjoy the feeling and the creative boost it gives you. I haven’t spent much time considering Jeffrey Beauchamp for the past year. He’s just a beautiful guy out there in the world, doing great things. I’m happy he’s there and I can’t wait to see his work in person. Maybe I’ll meet him someday. Maybe I won’t. Doesn’t matter. It’s enough to love what he does.

 The world is full of wonderful: people and art, rivers and mountains, music and words. There are a million ways to fall in love. Are you falling in love? Well, what are you waiting for?

You can check out Jeffrey Beauchamp’s work at jeffreybeauchamp.com. If you happen to be in San Francisco this week, you could attend the opening of his solo show She Misplaced My Hurricane Blueprints at The McLoughlin Gallery, 49 Geary Street. The show runs through March. 

What if I were responsible?

What if I got to decide how I would treat my loved ones? What if I could decide to see the ten ways that my son has been loving and kind, and ignore the crack he made about his sister? What if I could look right in my 5-year-old daughter’s face when she spoke to me, stopping my busyness for a moment and really listen to her? What if I could decide to listen to what my partner says, though I’ve heard it a hundred times and could finish the thought?

I wonder what would happen if I were able to decide how to feel about my boss. When I didn’t think something was right, what would happen if I said so? What if I could decide to say what I think would work, again and in different ways until I was heard? What if my people didn’t do something the way I wanted and I decided it was because I wasn’t clear enough? What would happen if I took the fall for something that could land on them?

What if I could show my neighbor my concerns about pesticide spraying, or ask her to turn her music down late at night? What if I didn’t ignore her but invited her over to my barbeque? What if I went to her heavy metal blowout? What if I didn’t have to talk about her to the other neighbors?

What if I could decide what to eat and when? What if I could exercise frequently to stay healthy and strong? What if I could go to sleep when I was tired? What if I could feel fully alive without caffeine? What if I could pay careful attention to what my body needs?

What if I didn’t have to make excuses for the ways that I was late, behind, deficient, unprepared, or disrespectful? What if I didn’t have to blame other people for something that I alone control? What if I could be honest even when it was difficult? What if I really heard what you are telling me? What if I really heard what I have been telling myself?

What if my life were mine to decide?

What if? 

Three ways to change your (the) world

Way back in the sixth century, the Chinese philosopher Laozi said, “The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” Some things just don’t change.
If you want your life to work, you’ve got to take the steps. Here are three things you can do starting right now, today. These things will not only improve your world in huge measure, but will also give the people around you a better person to work with, live with, and partner with. Hey…you can change the world. Just look at your feet and get moving.
1.      Make agreements only if you actually agree.
Doesn’t this seem obvious? If you say you’re going to do something, do it. If you say you’re not going to do something, don’t. One of the fastest ways to lose goodwill and trust among people is to say one thing and do something else. People don’t like being blown off after making agreements with you. If you routinely make agreements and then do the opposite of what you’ve said, you are systematically undermining your credibility. To say nothing of your likeability.
But this kind of thing happens all the time, right? What is going on? There are all kinds of reasons why we might make an agreement that we won’t honor. We may not know what we want, so we follow someone else’s lead, and only later decide we don’t want to do what we said we would. We may be exhausted by an argument and feel like it’s easier to just say the thing that will stop the argument. We may know what our boss (our partner, our kid) wants us to say, despite the fact that we have serious reservations about the plan. We may just want to make everyone happy. We may agree because we just didn’t think enough about what the agreement means in terms of actual work.
But these things will cause us more harm than good in the long run. Besides, they’re wimpy. Don’t be wimpy; it’s not good for you or the world.  Get to know your own mind, get clear about what work is involved in a commitment, and to be willing to do it. Otherwise, don’t agree. Be strong enough to take the fallout of saying no. Of doing it your way. Of not agreeing. Man up. Woman up.
2.      Encourage rather than discourage.
It’s so easy to shoot people down. We are, after all, just human beings, likely to falter, predictably weak, full of inconsistencies, and annoying habits. Even when we admire someone, we may think it best to tell them what they’re doing wrong and how they could be better. Are you the one who always has something discouraging to say? Stop it.
Because aren’t we incredible, too? Yes, we are. We humans are capable of amazing feats, of daring adventure, of brilliant thinking, of breathtaking accomplishment, of heartening kindness. When we focus on the greatness in each other (and ourselves, by the way) we tend to bolster that area and grow it a little bit. So what do you want to focus on in other people? What do you want to emphasize?  So what if your colleague came up with a lousy idea? You could say, “Wow that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” It may just be. But what if you said, “Hey, I am glad you’re thinking about this stuff. What would happen if you looked at this this way?” When we encourage, we allow people room to be bigger, smarter, and brighter. When we look to encourage, we have to actively seek out what is good in any situation. It’s a good practice (see number three.) When we encourage, we let people know that they are valuable, whether their particular idea at that moment is worth pursuing or not. People who feel valuable do better stuff. Simple.
3.      Smile.
Easy, right? But powerful. Smiling can change your world and the world around you. I’m talking about genuine, eye-crinkling, full-mouthed smiling. Smiling like you mean it. If you’re smiling, you’re thinking good thoughts. You’re finding something around you to appreciate. And if you’re paying attention, there’s almost always something to appreciate. One of the best ways to change your world, the world, is to focus on the things worth smiling about. And then smile.

Why not to jump on Facebook and Twitter when someone dies

    Whitney Houston’s death was first announced on Twitter. Mainstream media followed quickly, and soon, the whole world knew that the troubled life of the famous pop star had ended.

     My only hope is that her daughter didn’t find out on Facebook.

     With so many of us are carrying around our cell phones, instantly connected to every conceivable form of social media, news like this no longer waits for the sheriff’s knock on the door.

     You don’t have to be particularly Zen to realize that we are, in fact, all connected.

    So when someone dies, who gets to say so? In the case of some wildly famous person, the basic rule seems to be: whoever finds out first.

     But applying this rule to the rest of us doesn’t work at all. And spreading news that isn’t ours to spread is a lousy way to give someone already-lousy news.

    Posting “RIP John Doe” on your Facebook site might mean that daughter Jane Doe finds out her dad has been killed before someone gets a chance to call her, or sit with her and tell her the news.

     When someone you know dies, just because you know it, doesn’t mean you need to tell it. This has become a real and troubling problem. Sheriff’s offices, charged with the difficult task of notifying families that a loved one has been killed, are struggling to get to the family before the inevitable texts, Tweets, and postings share the news first. Sometimes, the sheriff’s visit is superfluous.

     Sure, the way that you hear that a loved one has been killed isn’t the most important thing here. If someone has been killed unexpectedly, there’s no good way to hear that news. Still, which would you rather have: a real live human being coming to your door with a measure of compassion and grace, or a (well intentioned) post:  “O.M.G. Mr. Lawler, my ninth-grade teacher, was killed in a car crash tonight. SO SAD.”

      Perhaps there is some human instinct that demands that we tell what we know, especially when it comes to important life events like death. Facebook and Twitter have trained us all to spout just about whatever comes to mind. But when someone dies, there’s a simple rule to follow so you don’t get in the way of the sometimes chaotic and emotional process those closest to the deceased are going through.

     Ask yourself this simple question: Am I family or close enough to be like family? If you’re not, it’s not your job to post the news. If you’re close enough to the family, ask if everyone close has been notified and if it’s okay to post. Then tell people that you got the family’s okay in your post. We need some sort of “all clear” in these circumstances.

     If you’re not close…just wait. The dead person will still be dead tomorrow.

    When do you get to post that picture you love of your teacher? Or the poem and the well-wishes to the family? It’s tricky. The family isn’t likely thinking about social media. Hopefully, whoever is working with the family will ask them to consider this avenue, because it is such a powerful and fast-moving medium. But if you haven’t seen anything on the family’s accounts or pages, waiting a day is safe. After 24 hours, chances are that all the people closest to the deceased have the news.

    Death is often a surprise, even, strangely, when it’s expected. Telling people someone has died is an important task. Those closest to the dead ought to be given a chance to do it their way.

     So we wait.

    If we’re not immediate family or close friends, it certainly isn’t going to hurt us. But if we don’t wait, we risk intrusion on someone else’s delicate process. 

Don’t let thinking ruin your life

Our thoughts are so powerful that we often believe everything we think.

But if we explore where our thoughts come from, and how they’re affecting our lives, we could decide to not take everything we think so seriously.

It might be a novel idea. Wait: I’m not my thoughts? Well…then what am I? Ah, now that is a good question. We certainly shouldn’t leave that answer up to the limited realms of our thoughts, should we?

When we can begin to distinguish between what we think and who we are, we open up a lot of room for new ways of being in the world. A lot of room for a rockin’ good life.

Let’s just take a simple example of how our thoughts can keep us stuck in a not-so-useful pattern.

A woman is being considered for an important project. An executive’s task is to go over all the woman’s materials and decide whether or not she’s the one to take on the project. The decision-maker looks through the woman’s work and finds incredible depth, great creativity, and evidence of a powerful mind. Her work stretches beyond ordinary materials. But the executive also sees that the candidate can’t spell to save her life. There are three words misspelled in the materials.

Now for the decision. The executive’s thinking may go something like this: He is embarrassed by the candidate’s spelling errors. He even flashes back to his sixth grade teacher announcing to the class that someone who can’t spell properly will never get anywhere in life. The executive knows (he thinks) that his sixth grade teacher’s declaration is overkill. But still, the executive knows (he thinks) that spelling is important, that spelling represents a person to the world. And he thinks that if he recommends this person, he might be criticized for recommending someone who can’t even spell.

The executive bumps the bad speller out of consideration.  

Did he make the right decision? Who knows? He may have just lost the next Einstein.

What is important to consider here are the ways that his thinking brought him to the choice. His choice was based on his fears, his inhibitions, and his doubts.

How many decisions do we make this way? How often do we miss a larger picture because our thinking is focused on details of questionable significance? Focused on our own thoughts.

We are all walking around with an amalgamation of experiences that create the ways we think. And our thinking informs the way we act. The question is how much of our thinking is helping us get where we want to be and how much of it is unhelpful at best.

There are two things that we do that prevent us from seeing things clearly. One is that we project parts of ourselves that we can’t see onto other people.

You know, this is the person who yells at people to stop yelling.

The other thing we do is transfer some characteristic that we have seen in someone in our past to a new person. Often, we think we recognize a trait or a habit or an attitude that comes from our parents, for example.  

You know, “You sound just like my mother.” Ack! (I personally adore my mother, and am happy if I ever manage to sound like her.)

Sigmund Freud developed the idea of projection and transference. Later, Carl Jung wrote about our “shadow,” what we can’t see or face in ourselves but can readily identify in other people. We as a culture certainly recognize the phenomena of seeing something annoying in someone else that we can’t necessarily see in ourselves.  Consider the language we have around the idea.

“Well, isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black.”  

“People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”

Oh my. If we’re going around making up all this stuff about other people that may or may not be true, how are we to stop ourselves?  How are we to recognize thinking that is not necessarily valid? Our thoughts are so convincing.

 Let me quote another authority on the matter:

I’m starting with the man in the mirror

I’m asking him to change his ways

No message could have been any clearer

If you want to make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself then make a change

That’s Michael Jackson, from one of his greatest hits, (and his favorite song), Man in the Mirror.

And M.J. got this right: we need to do this for ourselves. We may have all kinds of ideas about how skewed someone else’s thinking is. But we are responsible only for our own thinking. We are the only ones capable of pausing and considering where our thinking comes from. We are the ones who can honestly question how important it is to stand by our thoughts. To defend them. To ruin our relationships because of them. To shrink our worlds because of them. To write off whole, complex, adaptable human beings because of a thought.

Conversely, if we get quiet on a regular basis and allow our thoughts to come and go, we begin to recognize that these thoughts don’t need to control what we do. We slow down. We listen for a quieter voice, a deeper thing that isn’t a thought. What is it?  It’s a knowing, a clarity. It doesn’t come from our racing minds, but someplace surer. Meditation is a great antidote to marathon thinking.

Yes, our thoughts can be powerful. But ultimately, we decide: Is this thought real? 

Rituals help us slow the break-neck speed of life

Molly, my youngest child, turned five yesterday.

There’s something about five that is so very different from four. When people are small, each year brings so many changes, such significant growing. But five feels like the difference between a very small kid and a kid. My baby is now a kid.

After seeing this happen with my three others, I might not be surprised at her long limbs, her precocious vocabulary, and her acute awareness of so much in the world. Still, I find myself looking at my thirteen-year-old daughter, and back to my five-year-old and asking, “How does this happen so quickly?”

Of course, when you’re in the thick of it, it doesn’t always go so quickly, right? One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons pictures two toddlers on a playground, their mothers sprawled out on a bench watching them. One mother says to the other something like, “It goes by so slowly.” Show me a parent who can’t relate to that.

Still, we do see our kids grow up and we do feel the sometimes frenetic pace of life. As a child, I wondered at how much adults went on about how children grow. Now, as one of those adults, I experience the whiplash that comes in watching kids grow up.

Life can move with such force and velocity, that we often feel like we can’t keep up. We all know that the swiftly-moving life phenomenon isn’t relegated to children. This is one of the reasons I am such a proponent of marking important events along the way. When there’s so much life happening so quickly, rituals give us anchor points for the times that really matter. When we create a ritual around a moment, it’s as if we’ve staked a little flag on the timeline of our lives. Even if we don’t remember everything precisely, the ritual gives us a point of reference, a way of making sense of a long and varied life.

We remember when someone is born or dies and life fills in around that important event.  We take time to honor a loved one’s contribution at a retirement party, and they have a chance to see what their work has meant over time to many people. We mark the coming-of-age with our daughter and we see her better prepared to face the world as a young woman.

We have to find the right way to honor each person. Not everyone likes to be the center of attention. Some people don’t like any attention at all. But there’s usually some way to mark an important moment. Taking the time to say, “Hey, you’re important to me” is never a wasted effort. In my experience, this effort not only benefits the person being honored, but also the people planning and attending the event or ceremony. Acknowledging each other is one of the ways that we feel connected to each other, to our families, or our larger communities.

So yesterday, I had five princesses at my house. Molly met each princess at the door, sprinkled her with gold glitter and led her into the castle. Once inside, the black stallion rode through the valley. The knights (or robbers, depending on the moment) chased the princesses. There was the inevitable quest for the tail properly placed on the pony. A treasure hunt ended with a box of gold in the form of honey sticks and magic wands and crowns to decorate. It was a day worth remembering.

Some of my most vivid memories are of my mother making parties for us kids. Halloween parties with dry ice and peeled-grape eyeballs. New Year’s Eve parties with sandwiches on tiny little pieces of rye bread. And birthday parties: surprises dress-up parties in the park, sleepovers with gaggles of girls, sophisticated dinners with spinach crepes.

And Molly will likely remember five because of her princess party. It was fun, of course. But the party will also help her make a little more sense to the passing of time. The party helped strengthen her community of neighbor girls. And the party places her firmly in her family and reminds her that she’s important. Oh, and she is.

This buoyant, funny, and nurturing girl has already changed the world so much in her first five years. As she moves along, she’ll learn ever more about how to give what she’s got to the world.

And that is worth vacuuming up gold glitter for the next week.

Ovulation: Woman as Magnet

 

     When it comes to women, we hear a lot about “that time of the month.” Not much of it is any good. Women are a mystery to many men, and, hell, we’re a mystery to ourselves much of the time. But I’ve been wondering why we can’t talk about the other “time of the month”: ovulation.

     Ovulation: the time when our hips move a little more fluidly, when our voices become a bit elevated, when we wear more revealing clothes, when we look good, and even our smell is enticing. This is the time of the month when women feel strong and clear and beautiful. When women are ovulating, they can do just about anything. This is also the time when we women want to jump our partners—or any man passing by, frankly—and get down to it.

     Yeah, why don’t we talk about this more often?

     As in: “Oh, don’t mind me, it’s just that time of the month,” says the sultry woman as she lays across a piano, dipping strawberries in chocolate and licking it off each one.

     It’s much more fun to talk to people when they’re feeling sexy and free and loving, isn’t it?

     An ovulating woman is a force. She has some kind of magnetic pull on people, especially men. She can, if she’s paying attention, feel this power. Not power over people, but real power. The power of knowing who she is and being happy because of it.

     Maybe that’s why this time of the month gets short shrift. Maybe the feeling of wanting to rub up against strangers in the nearest alleyway is a little scary for some of us women. Maybe for some part of us, it’s easier to complain about cramps, about blood gushing between our legs, about bloating, and about wanting to rub out strangers and loved ones alike in an alley and everywhere else.

     Maybe some men, too, are a little daunted by the idea of a woman acutely aware of her own sexual prowess. I’m not even talking about sex particularly, but there is, in some of us, a large fear of being wanted, being needed, by another human being. For men, the ovulating woman is a draw, but the question might remain: What else does she want? If she has this power over me, what else will she require? Which can bring about the terrifying and corresponding question: Do I have what it takes?

     And there is that thing about getting pregnant. This little magical time of the month does happen to correspond with the precise window in which a woman will get pregnant if she has sex.

      I will never forget a doctor’s asking me at fifteen whether I was sexually active. I wasn’t, but after he did his examination and asked me when my last period was, he said something that spooked me a bit, as I’m sure he intended it to. He said, “If you have sex today, you will get pregnant.”

     I remember thinking, Geez, how does he know that?

     There are just a few days a month when a woman can get pregnant. As my body became less of a mystery to me, I understood how that doctor knew. I’ll spare you the details, but think egg whites. As in mucous. This is the stuff of babies and middle-of-the-night pacing with a crying infant and diapers and responsibility, and, yes, people will really need you as your life is changed forever. Okay, I didn’t spare you all of the details. It’s good to know, though, don’t you think? Condoms are a beautiful thing.

     So maybe that’s it. Maybe ovulation is scary and we don’t want to be that attractive and men don’t want us to be that attractive because we all know where that goes.

     Yes, and…so what? What about fun and playing around and flirting and backrubs and oil and warm beaches and hot tubs and smooth skin and touching and sweat and tongues and cuddling and our song and knowing that little spot behind his ear and that great time at the bed-and-breakfast?

     What about just having tea with someone who is radiantly, vibrantly, enthusiastically alive? What about that?

     It’s worth paying attention to, that’s what. The fun and connection and beauty and raised heart rates are some of the things that make life worth living. Might as well live while we’re alive.

     We can do this all the time, of course. And the older a woman gets, I think the more she lives in this natural place of strength. We would all be better off if we allowed ourselves and others to breathe life into the beauty, power, and force that is a woman ovulating.

     Consider this the start of my campaign for ovulation awareness. If we’re going to spend so much energy on a time of the month, I vote for ovulation.

What are you creating? Don't miss out on this vital part of being human

One of the ironies of being an adult is that we can take our hard-earned experience and use it…against ourselves. Sometimes we look at what we’ve done and then limit our possibilities rather than expand them.

            Case in point: Squeamishness over trying some new thing, especially something “creative.”

            We find all kinds of reasons not to do something new and different. But we’re missing out when we forgo our drive to create new things. 

            I look at kids and I see them working on all kinds of new projects, new ways of seeing, new ways of learning. They don’t know how to knit, but they pick up needles and, after a bit of instruction, they’re whipping out scarves and mittens for everyone they know.

            Or they’re putting their whole hands in a gob of paint and moving it around on a page and are as pleased as can be with the result.

            Kids learn how to cook, how to sew, how to sing, how to dance. They learn how to jump and tumble and balance and sprawl. I’m not saying that there’s never any hesitation with kids, sure there is. But kids are open to figuring out something new. Children haven’t built up the stockpile of reasons why they can’t do something.

            It’s only as we get older that we start to hear the things that adults say regularly.

            “Oh, I can’t do that.”

            “That’s not my thing.”

            “I’m not creative.”

            Not creative? Really?

            It seems more likely that you’ve just forgotten how. It’s easy enough to forget. Life is busy and we get into routines and one day starts to seem a lot like the next. We humans love our routines. And while routines can be excellent for stability, they can also gum up the works of our creative side. Even something that seems inherently creative—writing, cooking, building—can be done by rote.

            But when we break out of our routines, when we allow ourselves to feel and think differently, when we go to the places that seem dark and unfamiliar in our minds, then we’ll find out the truth of the matter: Our creativity is pleading to be fed.

            When we quell those voices in our heads that insist we can’t do something…well, then everything changes. Then who knows what we can do?

            There is also a voice that says, “Yes, I can do that.” We just have to find it and tease it out and give it a comfortable spot to grow in. Shine some light on that thought. Give it some air, some room to move around.

            We all have a creative spark. We can live our lives so that we fan this spark into a full fire, or we can shut it down and live a paint-by-the-numbers life.

            But people who push themselves into new places tend to live more fulfilling, more productive, more engaged lives. When we figure out how to shake things up, to try new things, to not worry about “looking stupid,” we find out that life is pretty fun.

            So try something different today. Take a new route to work. Walk instead of drive. Create a vision of what a loved one will be like when she’s old.See a loved one as an old person. Imagine a difficult person as a baby. Speak up in a meeting. Be quiet at the dinner table. Pull out your paints, your guitar, your garden plans. Plant something completely frivolous.

            Look around you and notice the amazing things that human beings create. You are a human being. What makes you think you have any less to give?