Looking for Love

"Looking for Love" - an observation of life around me..

I am looking for Love. I will do anything for it.

I will ignore.
I will be callous.
I will be loud.
I will throw a tantrum.
I will be silent.
I will bear a grudge.
I will withhold.
I will push my way through.
I will cry.
I will scream.
I will fight for it.
I will break down.
I will run away.
I will lose.
I will win.
I will confess.
I will lie.
I will give in.
I will give up.
I will adjust.
I will bully.
I will not budge.

Because…
I was not taught to listen with my heart.
Only with my ears.

I was not taught to look with my understanding.
Only with my eyes.

I was not taught to speak what I feel.
Only what I fear.

And so I learnt survival
and not living.

And I don’t know real love.

I am looking for love and when I find it…
I will continue to do all I have ever done.
Because I know no other way to be anymore.
And I will be sorry I hurt you.
And I will lose your love.
Or live in fear of losing it.
And be back where I started…
..Looking for Love.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I now know that love has many faces.

The hand that hit me as a child had love for me despite the blows. It once broke hard earth as a labourer’s hands so I could have pretty dresses and premium baby food. It also after the blows worked relentlessly to get me a scholarship so I could end up better than those hands.

The hands that never hugged me loved me despite that coldness. It made my meals, did my laundry and started a garden for me because those were the only acts of affection those hands knew how to afford.

The hands that threw away my life savings loved me despite the irresponsibility. It once wiped away my tears as a lover who gave me wings to fly free. It also after the regret of selfish gain worked tirelessly to feed, clothe and pamper our babies so they would never know lack. It also continues to wipe away my tears and holds me close on cold, dark nights.

The hands that did not pick up the phone to accompany me in my darkest hour loved me despite the lack of time and ability to find the right words. It sent money for my daughter to continue dancing and painting. It also folded in constant prayer asking for all the comfort it could not give to arrive to me through someone else.

And to those who genuinely did not love me.. they did too. In their own fashion, however they could afford to. It could have been an hour of shared laughter over pretentious coffee or in one moment of hello in a courtesy call.

Because I now know that love is like money to many. They can’t give more than what's in their personal account. And unlike bank accounts where figures show clear deficits, hearts that lack are not as apparent to the observer, and far less so to the account holder.

And so, far too many people keep it all in... whatever love they have, unsure how much they actually have and how to gain more. And if they must, they dole it out ever so carefully, weighing every heart dollar, afraid they will run out. Constantly looking for their perception of love they can afford or that is of ‘bankable’ value, they fail to see so much available love that is in plain view.

It could be a street vendor giving me a 10 cent discount on my breakfast.

It could be my child openly stomping off and slamming the door to cool off instead of agreeing in silent resentment just to appease me.

It could be an ‘outer circle’ friend who regularly remembers to send me an uplifting message.

It does not need to be a lover devoted to me all the time, a friend who is available 24-7, a parent who understands my view constantly, a spouse who adjusts to my flaws effortlessly, or a child who is obedient and grateful everyday.

Because I see now that love wears too many disguises and I often miss them because I am looking at love conditionally in my quest for unconditional love. In my longing to be loved without expectations pinned on me, I love conditionally by only accepting love that I can recognize beyond the disguise it wears, according to my interpretation and perception of what it should look like… according to my own expectations of what love is.

Instead, I will do well from this point onwards to love unconditionally by accepting that love could look like anything.

I have a feeling that as I open my mind and heart to this possibility, it may just be that I will find the unconditional love I seek everywhere in and around me. And looking for Love this way.. I will at last find the amazing reciprocity of life. I will find at long last.. Love looking for ME.

LOVE IS...The Power to Change Our Endings

There are many photographs in my home. All of them are sweet memories. All of them of people and moments I hold close to my heart. But photographs of my wedding are not among them. I have a few framed but they are hidden away in a corner, as if I am ashamed to display them. I am. They give me no comfort and remind me of a day I would rather forget.

For the longest time, memories of my wedding day have been hazy. Somehow, I feel we started our life together all wrong.. despite our love surviving against all odds.

He had waited for me since he was 10. I finally fell in love with him at 15. Our ethnic backgrounds clashed for in other parts of the world, our cultures never meet. I fought my parents, lied, sneaked out back doors, was threatened, beaten and was even locked up to keep me away from him. I broke up with him just once wondering at the last minute if the first guy I had ever loved was enough of a sample to commit my entire life. I lasted a mere month without him, a month ending with me running back knowing for sure that I was going to hell if I followed my logical, complicated head rather than my loving, simple heart. That was the only time we were ever willingly apart, on my part anyway. He flew 8000 miles to make me change my mind and finally left because he loved me enough to let me go if that was what would make me happy. Happiness, I soon discovered while on my own, was a place forever in his heart.

We were sure we wanted a life together more than anything this world had to offer us, so we said our vows quietly soon after he proposed before a witness of two. But that was far away from my home and when I returned to my parent’s house, we had one last hurdle – to make our secret marriage a public one so that we could finally wake up next to each other every morning for the rest of our lives. My father finally agreed to our wedding, gaining respect for my love with every week he played another game of chess with him instead of taking me out, and we were ecstatic. After 8 years of clandestine meetings, measured conversations through paper and phone lines, of hearing my heart crack every time we had to go our own separate ways, we were a wedding day away. Enough waiting for someone else’s permission just to see his smile, so I could have one of my own. We had finally purchased our ticket to Happy Ever After.

But I never walked down the aisle to him like I had hoped I would. We exchanged our lifelong vows in a borrowed room with a borrowed minister with no evidence a wedding was taking place. I held no bouquet. I didn’t even have a special dress for the occasion. I had just pulled on whatever best I could find.

The only beautiful things I remember from that night were our love for each other, our handwritten vows and our wedding rings. Those and my lover’s tears as he spoke his promises to me should have been more than enough, but deep down there were unspoken hopes and hurts surrounding our wedding day that cast a shadow over us. Our love should have been strong enough to dispel that shadow, but instead, it was that we loved each other too much that we gave it a space in our lives. We tacitly denied the glitch in our love story, comforting each other with silver linings instead. And so that shadow became a thin barrier over time..so thin it wasn’t a tangible presence… yet a barrier nonetheless that filtered out the full spectrum of our happiness. Every wedding anniversary became a bittersweet day we both gingerly celebrated, a concerted effort to avoid that shadow.

But one fine day a decade later, I find myself finally at a place where I have enough strength to face that shadow and revisit our painful wedding memories. It is at my best friend’s wedding where my love and I spend a beautiful Saturday evening side-by-side with close friends, having the loveliest conversations. I wear a beautiful new dress I like and my lover, his favourite new clothes. We carry in our arms not a bouquet, but our sweet youngest daughter. And the world stands still when as the couple finish their vows, my lover gives me his own and we exchange our own kiss. We enjoy the beauty of everything around us celebrating true love – the moonlight, the flowers, the friendships, the photographs, the music, the food and the delightfully dressed guests. Gazing up at the full moon that night, I become aware that we have just enjoyed the garden wedding I had wished to have for our 10th wedding anniversary.

There I finally see the shadow for what it is - the regret that we did not make a better effort to have a special wedding worthy of our great romance. Yet hidden among my memories that have collected dust in the shadows lies a truth I have ignored along with my wedding photographs. We did in fact make a great effort for our wedding, but it was all directed at keeping the peace between our families long enough so that we could finally have what we truly wanted – not a mere wedding, but for the both of us to be together at last.. daily and freely. We desperately wanted to walk out in the open holding each other’s hand and be free to decide where to go and what time to call it a day. To have the simple freedom of unabashedly expressing our love for each other anytime, anywhere. All these years I have failed to see that unlike other couples, our marriage was not a uniting of two families but a barter to gain the basic freedom so many other couples take for granted.. the luxury of a shared meal, the joys of a simple heartfelt conversation.

Our wedding day was indeed a great moment in our love story, although it was not a reflection of our great romance. Instead, our wedding was a complicated and painful experience we avoid remembering because it was a reflection of the many barriers we faced as lovers. It is a day that is a stark reminder of the unsupportive relationships in our lives and the discomfort of two clashing cultures barely accommodating each other, begrudgingly admitting that love had conquered their differences. Our wedding was purely a social contract between two families, not a celebration of our love. Neither family really had any interest in a union they tried so hard to deny, and it follows that it could never have turned out a fitting day to celebrate it.

So I no longer feel regret attached to that day because as it turns out, there was no glitch in our love story after all. Far from caving in to the great pressure from our families to give up our own wedding day dreams, we gave in to their needs and demands because we had a far greater dream of life beyond our wedding. Our wedding day was not the weak link in our romance, it was a testimony of its strength.. as it was our final battleground. We may have come away with some casualties, but it is the day we won the war. We can look back now with pride over a battle well fought instead of with regret over the injuries we gained because after 10 years of marriage, we stand on soil that was well worth fighting for.

A decade of love that has grown stronger with time has given me the power to rewrite our history, and I am finally free of my runaway wedding and all its hovering shadows. After all these years, our wedding anniversary will finally be a day of great meaning, but one equal to many Independence Day celebrations all over the world as opposed to the romantic Valentine Day memories so many wedding anniversaries evoke. That’s okay though.. because it’s our hard won independence that keeps us cherishing the love we fought so hard to set free.

Still, our love story is missing a day to celebrate the great romance of our life. A day just for us.. to celebrate the very special love we share with each other that has seen the test of time and great trials. Perhaps a garden picnic or a cocktail party by a pool.. with flowers and pretty mementos. Definitely plenty of photographs taken of us both laughing into each other’s eyes and holding each other close. Captured moments in time of a very special day celebrating our life together.. tangible reflections of our great love story we will always be happy to remember and display along with our other cherished memories. But for now, I’ve added another photograph to our collection of favourites.

There are many photographs in my home. All of them are sweet memories. All of them of people and moments I hold close to my heart. Photographs of my wedding are now among them. I have taken them out of the dusty corner they were hidden in, because my love and I are proud to display them. They remind us now of a day we can never forget.. the day our love flew free.

Polka Dots

I whispered to my sleeping Aeriadne today, “I have always wanted a little girl like you.”

It’s true. I have.

I never owned a Barbie, but how I wanted one. I found reasons to dislike her after my father said ‘NO’. I wanted a Cabbage Patch doll more than a Barbie. I liked my pretty hairclips – the ones with the flowers and leaves that my aunts didn’t want anymore. They glittered. I remember the first pair of earrings my dad bought me that I chose myself – dangling hearts that shone with crystal Zirconias. I loved getting the hand me downs from my aunt’s cupboards – dresses and skirts. I remember a red dress with a picture of a beautiful Victorian girl in a large flower-decked sunhat. It was a long red dress with tiny white polka dots that I had when I was 6. I wore it until the zipper got stuck. My mother fixed the zipper but when it got spoilt from overuse – she said it was time to move on. I cried. I remember that dress clearly now. And then there was a tee shirt with a picture of another girl on it, another hand me down from an aunt. I used it until it was threadbare. My mother had to throw it away when I was at school one day. Then came the white dress with tiny green polka dots that I cherished. It had an umbrella skirt and puff sleeves, not unlike Snow White’s. My father loved seeing me in it. And I loved wearing it through my teenage years. I had forgotten that dress until this moment.

Those were monuments of my growing up a girl. I realise now that I had held on to them so tightly because they were the only times I was freely allowed my status as a girl. I was scoffed mercilessly by a brother 8 years older, who scoffed at my tears, at my sensitivity, at my being a girl. My mother never stood up for me. Ours was a home hostile to feminity and she was a feminist who believed deep down that the only emancipation for a woman was to compete on equal footing in a man’s world. So I learnt over time that to be of any value and belong, I had to be as good as a boy. I never played with dolls. My aunts were scolded for painting my nails. They tried once and never went there again. My father made sure I stayed away from being ‘distracted’ by feminine objects.

I remember my 10th birthday so clearly. It has always stayed in my memory as my best birthday. I now know why. My mother made me a pink dress with a pink sash. It had tiny red and green, yes, polka dots. They bought me a cake. I had an actual birthday cake. And my father gave me a pretty pink Diary and on its cover was a picture of a girl in Victorian dress holding a parasol. That’s all I remember. But I remember that being the happiest moment in my life. And I realise now it was because my brother had not been there. It was his first year in college and he had gone away. So no one tainted my girly moment and instead the two uncles who were staying with us that year made sure it was a little girl party with their compliments and indulgences. And I had my pink diary to last long after the day ended. It was my prized treasure, a symbol of my identity as a girl in my secret moments.

I have never felt truly comfortable being a girl. Well trained by my parents, I always had a desire to best the boys. And always, the boys knew it and were intimidated. When I fell in love, it was a scary prospect for my parents. The biggest distraction for a girl, they wanted none of it. But my future husband was too strong a flame. He loved all things a girl should be, and he easily summoned and set free that trapped little girl inside me without either of us understanding what the great attraction was. He has been my unwitting knight in shining armour and for that, he has a lifetime of my unwavering love.

I was hesitant to have a son and when my husband announced he only wanted girls, I was thrilled inside. When my daughter was born, I felt like the Christmas present I had always wanted had arrived. I threw myself into loving her. But Aeslinn wasn’t as gentle as I had imagined a girl would be. She wasn’t very interested in all the girly stuff I rolled out and all my girly plans seemed thwarted. Competitive like a boy, athletic like a boy and self-absorbed like a boy – I had a hard time adjusting and accepting her as she grew into a girl I had no idea how to love. But I did adjust and accept, and when my second daughter was born 5 years on, I had no idea that she was the sensitive girl I had been waiting for. Adjusted now to dealing with a masculine approach to life, I had completely forgotten why I had wanted girls.

Aeriadne has had a tough time at home. I have so struggled to love her well. I should have suspected when she grabbed a teddy bear at 6 months old and brought it everywhere, that she was sensitive. I should have suspected when at 8 months her first words were ‘pooh bear’, that she was sensitive. I should have known clearly, when at 15 months she dug out and dragged ALL the soft toys Aeslinn had ignored, onto her bed and declared that her ‘friends’ were sleeping with her from now on – that she was sensitive. But I was too lost in my left brain to make the connection. Aeriadne believes in fairies and princesses and pretty shoes and nail polish and make-up. “Look mommy, a WHOLE SHOP full of make-up!!” she announced two weeks ago when we passed a cosmetic store. She was able to co-ordinate her outfits at 12 months old and yes, cries at the drop of a hat. It IS wearying, all that crying. And it gets on Aeslinn’s left-brain nerves – this sensitive sibling who isn’t left-brained in any way. I realise now that her crying hasn’t annoyed me because it’s loud or frequent. It’s annoyed my left-brain programming. And deep down, it scares me because she reminds me too much of the sensitive child I was, and I realise now that I fear she will be hurt for being ‘girly’ like I was, if she remains so right–brained. Some part of me wants her to ‘shut up!’ before ‘they hear you and come for you too!!’

Aeriadne loves her Godmother. I love her Godmother! My cousin is a girly girl who is a doctor; long ago considered a man-dominated profession. She is independent, strong, capable and stylish in her own right. She played Rapunzel growing up. She cried A LOT growing up. She still loves teddy bears and loves shoes. She buys Aeriadne nail polish. She buys Aeslinn nail polish..even if Aeslinn only wants it as a competitive sport. My cousin is like the Girly FairyGodmother, come into our lives, to get us out of the soot and send us to the ball as Princesses whenever she is in our Orbit. And I love every bit of it, as much as my girls because deep down, I am still a girly girl. And I am tired of being a left-brained girl, fitting into a man’s world out of long ingrained habit.

My father has passed on. I still love him and understand clearly that he didn’t want me to hit a glass ceiling in a man’s world, and that he wanted the best for me. But I also realize now that he grew up in the 50’s and 60’s when it was clearly a man’s world. This is the new millennium. It is no longer a man’s world for my daughters because I am their mother. And unlike my mother who believed feminism was being as good as a man, I believe feminism means being the best woman you can be. If you are left-brained woman, then feel free to be left-brained but judge not your right-brained sisters, who are equally free to be right-brained.

I have a third daughter. She is showing signs of being a blessed balance between her first two sisters. When I first realised how much she looked like a cabbage patch doll on my lap, a lightbulb went on in my heart. Somewhere deep inside was recognition of a dream long forgotten. Aenishea wears dresses like a doll, bats her eyelashes and flirts with grown men. All this at a mere 14 months. Her Godmother, the Girly FairyGodmother doctor, thinks she’s a sassy piece of girl power and her daddy seems to be happy with that description. She has no reason to inherit her grandfather’s fears. Aenishea Nadea means Constant Hope and aptly so. She has brought the light of right-brained feminism back into my life, and in so doing, helped free Aeriadne and provide Aeslinn a dose of feminity she much desires but is unable to establish on her own.

My girls have set me free and to return the favour, I only have one expectation left of them as they grow, the same expectation I have of myself: to live my remaining days being true to who I am so I can finally be the woman I was meant to be.

Today I bought Aeriadne an anklet, the one piece of jewellery I have always worn with a passion..the one piece of jewellery she has hankered after since turning one. It was not only a symbolic act of setting her free to be the girly girl she is, but also my final act of exorcising the ghost of my left-brained childhood and finally claiming my right to be the girly girl I was made to be.

Aeriadne has a favourite dress. And it is white with, yes, small black polka dots.

Ode to My Father

Today i remember my father. From him i gained my love or words, love of knowledge, love of laughter, love of plants, love of music, love of photography, love of life, and love of love.

He played the guitar and drums when The Beatles were all the rage. Then the kids came along and he had to be a serious family man. He would sit with his guitar on rainy days, when he could neither garden nor get sporty, and sing. It's how i learned many songs. Despite his meagre salary that mostly went to the family, i think good musical casettes were the only things he splurged on himself. Oh and cigarettes, which eventually killed him. But he always said he would die on his own terms.

My father earned a labourer's salary. His dug out rocks from the ground to make way for agricultural experimentation. They eventually figured out he was good with the plants and had an even keener mind to run the experiments, so he became a research assistant. The trips to his workplace are some of my most cherished memories. I saw amazing plants inside that agricultural centre, not found outside its gates. And my father knew all their names. In there, he was always his calmest and spoke from his heart. The day i got too old to tag along to work with him into that magical portal was the day i lost the door into his real thoughts and feelings. I often longed to go back there. And now i know why.

He always had a crossword going. He would bring home the Australian Women's Weekly gained from female colleagues, so he could do the crossword pages. He read voraciously. My father would start a Jeffrey Archer book and stop only for meals, baths and to sing me to sleep. But as he grew older he was able to space out his reading. But not his crosswords, gaining access to books specially dedicated to the topic when i got old enough to venture into parts of the city he never went to, to find them for him.

My father made his own things when he couldn't find it in the stores. Sometimes he would buy something and personalise it if he wanted something custom made but couldn't make the first part himself. Like buying a t-shirt and modifying the sleeves because he couldn't weave his own fabric. He once combined two blankets to create a make-shift version of his own quilt. Sometimes he would buy something and use it as a prototype for 'better' versions he felt would serve the world more practically. Like the time he fashioned several desktop stationery holders and gave them to his favourite people.

I still have the Brazil nut he made into a jewellery box. He made three. I wonder if the other two recipients kept theirs. He always said those nuts would outlive him. The only nuts tougher than him he said. And i'm not talking about the edible part of the nut mind you. I am talking about the outer Brazil nut shell that can only be opened with a saw before you get to the individual inner shells. He transformed them into works of art. But not everyone appreciated his artist heart.

My father had a hard time in a society that expected 'normal' behaviour, which really just meant following accepted norms and staying within the defined status quo. Looking back now, i compare my father to Vincent Van Gogh. A rejected artist, unappreciated for who he could not but be. A tortured artist, forced to fit in to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. He never found the great love his heart longed for. And my father lived most of his life a broken man. Undervalued, unaffirmed and haunted by a deep jungle of complex emotions he could not conquer, he lived most of his days a lonely man.


2 years after his departure, i find myself rewriting much of his history. For it is mine too. My father's legacy has been to leave me not only all the things he cherished, but also all the things that went wrong in his life.. for me to walk into those very same rooms and banish the darkness that he left unconquered.

No more shadows of failure and despair. All of his fears, all that he lacked, all he judged and was judged for... it is all over. All that he loved, all that he had in abundance, all he embraced and accepted with joy... I carry them with me, and am passing them on to my children with great advances attached.

My father, in his struggle to remain noble and find happiness despite his pain, taught me to be authentic. My father, in his weakness and through mistakes, taught me to be true. My father, within his tortured heart recognised himself in me and although with equal parts of fear imbued, wanted for me what he never had and more. And because he wanted it so much, I now have it all.

A Poem for Our 10th Wedding Anniversary

My 8 year old was asked to share "What Marriage Means to Me" at her godmother's wedding. When she shared this poem she had prepared for it with us, I started crying knowing that our child was speaking aloud what she had seen growing up. To believe you have a great love despite life's challenges is one thing. To have your 8 year old describe it is really something else.

What Marriage Means to Me

by Aeslinn Noel

Marriage to me is...
a whole lifetime of Happiness
a whole lifetime of Love
a whole lifetime of Being Together.

Marriage to me is also...
Sharing your ups and downs
Having someone whom you really love with you
Through your sadness and your happiness.

Marriage to me is...
Spending time together
And having someone who cares for you when no one else does.

Marriage to me is...
watching the sun go down together.

Peace

I grew up in a home and society that tacitly accepted verbal and physical abuse as a fact of life. I know my parents loved me because they cared deeply about me, but I stopped feeling safe after turning 7, when they started meting out corporal punishment and emotional blackmail to get me to tow the line. They stopped shielding me from their anger and angst with life, and I grew up longing for unconditional love and for freedom to have my own space to feel and be.

As the years passed by, I read about and saw poverty, war and destruction and realized that the fights in my home were a common denominator among all mankind. “You sometimes have to be cruel to be kind,” my father would say. But to me it didn’t feel right deep down to see people choose such malicious consequences to get what they want from life. So I grew up thinking that to be an ambassador of peace, perhaps I should stop wanting and stop speaking up. I should serve others and create a heaven on earth with my giving. The words of Jesus to give your tunic along with your coat became my life’s purpose. Gandhi and Mother Theresa became my role models of selfless earthly martyrdom.

But I eventually lost my identity and purpose in this world as I martyred myself constantly. I often beat myself up with regret for the times I did speak up and fought for what I believed in because having a fiery spirit and coming from an aggressive home, the only model I had was one of anger, where people spoke up harshly in a fit of temper. I ended up hurting the people around me every time I cared too much. I hated myself often, wondering how I could possibly love deeply and yet be a verbal and physical threat to those in my care whenever I let life overwhelm me. I saw my father in myself and felt sorry for my husband and children, and even my friends. I became withdrawn and fell into depression, slowly eking away inside and became a shadow of the person many knew I could have been.

But one day two years ago, my father died unexpectedly. We had not spoken very much over a long time because I was still struggling to find peace in his presence. My husband, facing health challenges, took a turn for the worse soon after and my life hung in balance. I nearly ended it, along with the lives of my children, at that point. But I reached out instead, some part of my heart still longing for a happy ending. That was the turning point of my life.

I began a soulful journey to clear out the basement of my heart from the many nasty rats living and breeding there, accumulated over years of ‘keeping the peace’ for all the wrong reasons, in all the wrong ways. For far too long I had kept inconvenient truths and secrets hidden away, unwilling to bother others and rock their boats. I had already killed myself inside many times over denying my need to be authentic at the cost of being ‘peaceful’ and maintaining the status quo. I had given up trying to participate in global causes once the stresses and challenges of a special care family made me feel small that I could not, with just two hands, do more beyond my own door. On the rare occasions I posted small cheques to disaster victims or orphanages, I ended up feeling as small as the stamps on those envelopes as I compared myself to Gandhi and Mother Theresa. A poor peace-keeper in my own eyes, influenced by the definitions of the common status quo, I had given up trying to make a difference in the world.

I live a very different life now. Two years after my father’s death, and a year after beginning my search for freedom from depression and to find my true self, I have been asked to share about the meaning of peace. If it appears to others I have it, I can only say that it has been gained through a great journey of self-love and brutal honesty with myself in reframing childhood memories, redefining relationships, reconstructing long held beliefs and removing negative blocks. And from the well spring of peace within myself found by forgiving and letting go of all I could not have changed and accepting all that I am and should not change, I can daily gain freedom to be the conduit of peace and love my heart has always longed for.

If I must talk about peace, I can only say what I have learnt.

• Peace is not a state of mind. It is a state of Being. If you can’t just BE at peace, then there are still some personal issues to work through and a lot of self love (not to be confused with selfishness) to be dished out to get through them.
• Peace involves a lot of forgiving and accepting. The hardest to be forgiven and accepted is usually ourselves. But once we do that, it becomes almost natural to forgive and accept others. Peace will then flow in and through us.
• Being involved in global peace concerns isn’t as much a matter of the hands as it is a matter of the heart. Simply WANTING WITH ALL MY HEART for victims in poverty, war or disaster to be safe, to be loved and to feel free again is far more powerful than sending a cheque or being there personally just because it’s something everyone else is doing. In short, doing isn’t a measure of your capacity to make a change. Loving is. A small act of love creates collective momentum far greater than a large act of the ego.
• Mother Theresa, Gandhi and Jesus are my inspirations but just because I do not touch lives to the scale they did does not mean I love lesser than them. In EACH AND EVERY ONE of us, there is the capacity to be heralds of love and peace as they were. All they did was follow their heart AT ALL COSTS. We often forget how much they were jeered and castigated for living out their passion. The difference between them and many of us is that they conquered their fear. Fear is the polar opposite of Love.
• Children raised in Heart Love cannot be spoiled. They learn self love naturally. It is children raised in Ego Love that are susceptible to the dangers of hurting others. They learn selfishness.
• Judgement often precedes hurtful responses and reactions. Peace involves choosing our own beliefs without imposing them on others, as well as giving others space for their varying convictions. And if tempted to judge, it’s useful to ask myself why I feel so insecure and do something about that instead.
• Peace always means non-violence. But it does not necessarily mean non-resistance. There are many ways to further a cause or make a stand lovingly and effectively without hurting others. If others choose to FEEL hurt, we can be at peace knowing that their negative perspective on the matter is a choice they make and is not something we have forced upon them.
• Being inert is not the same as being peaceful. PeaceFULL implies someone who is consciously choosing to bring peace into the world through their choices. INERTtia means staying put due to a state of nature. Someone who is unconsciously harmless is not necessarily peaceful. At any point, such individuals could cause harm, intentionally or otherwise, by withholding affection, keeping indifferent or merely being unavailable. I spent a lifetime, to my detriment, trying to emulate inert people and gathering inert friends not knowing the difference between the two.
• Peace for a person in Borneo may not be the same as peace for a person in Europe. But neither has the better view. Geography and History shape much of our wants and needs and personalized adaptations to the planet we live in. Global peace may be best found within each of us trying to be the best version of ourselves exactly where we find ourselves to be. Then we can find the common denominator within us, Spirit, which transcends and stays unchanged by Geography or History. Finding Spirit enables us to find the capacity for Real Love – the Guardian of Peace.

Love and Light to you as you walk your own path..