A Summer of Firsts

So much happened when I turned sixteen. Driver's license, contact lenses, a summer job, making new friends, first kiss. And then starting high school that fall. And in another state a newly wed couple gave birth to a health baby boy. I did not meet him until he was almost 30. But it was worth the wait. 

Love and Warmth

As the Fall weather turns increasingly colder my warm bed becomes more difficult to leave. Yet I wanted to get out of bed this morning. To get my fingers moving on the keyboard and to thank you for being there. 

It is true that I don’t know who is reading this, but I do know you are one of my 7-billion brothers and sisters on this planet. And I suspect that you, like me, and all humans feel varying levels of love. Sometimes there is no doubt. And sometimes our doubts grow.

Of course there are tricks. There are ways to get a better glimpse of how fickle perception can sometimes be. It’s easy to make a swimming pool feel warmer, you just take a cold shower before you swim. 

Is it just as easy to feel love? Can I feel greater love by just imagining how much colder I’d feel without the love I now enjoy? In a way that's what I do when I think about the love I have enjoyed throughout my life. But it doesn't seem like a trick. It seems more like cleaning off the my glasses rather than putting on a rose-colored pair.

There’s always been that warmth of the love of my parents. Even though they are both dead now, I think of all the love they gave me even before I was born, the love that resulted in my conception, then how I was loved in utero, then as baby, as their son, as I learned and grew up. Can I still feel that love? What of other loves? The love of family. The love of friends.

Perhaps there is much, much more love throughout my life and in my life this very moment than I have been able to feel. Gratitude and perception are always at play, aren't they? I don’t feel the warmth of my bed until the weather turns cooler in the Fall. And I don’t fully perceive all the love in my life until on a quiet morning I realize it has always been there. Even when I’ve doubted.