Love

Who Lingers in Your Heart?

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

I have a very insightful friend who wrote me an email yesterday and in it she said:   I often wonder in your heart, who it is that lingers there, who it is that still has your love but does not know it.  Whoever she is, she is lucky and hope one day if it is God’s will your hearts will connect again and it will be so great for you James.  I know you are not looking, but I feel inside you hope for her.  I do not know this, I just have a feeling you have someone you still love and cannot get out of your heart, probably because she still belongs there…   

When I read what my friend wrote, with hardly any thought I knew the answer to her question.  It was simply “Yes, there is one who lingers in my heart and the name is______.”  Initially my thinking went just to one person but quickly afterwards came the realization of varying sized pieces of love remain in my heart for many others as well.  My thoughts widened from at first thinking only of romantic love to a broader view of the many that have a place in my heart.  

I am first and foremost who I am genetically who has been molded and shaped by my life experience.  After that I am a collection of bits and pieces borrowed from a myriad of different people.  Some things borrowed are buried within me to where my awareness no longer touches them.  Others left a legacy labeled within me clearly with their name. 

From “Love is never a mistake” by Z. Smith
Love is never a mistake, never wasted, nor lost, even if it seems to go nowhere… Love has divine, everlasting qualities, and rewards beyond measure…  Love, and loving feelings are divine expansions of your own true nature, and always good and worthy and right…  

I have been blessed to have loved and borrowed and learned from many people I cherish.  The scope and meaning varies from large to small, but in no particular order here are some people I loved and learned from, each in a specific way. 

From a young teacher I idolized in 6th grade I borrowed his habit of wearing a wrist watch “upside down” with the watch face on the palm side of my arm.  He taught me how much fun learning is.   

From my beloved Grandfather I borrowed a saying: “Putting things in writin’ keeps friendly folks, friendly”.  That has always been especially interesting to me since he could not read or write and my grandmother had to read everything to him.   From him I learned about imperfection and honor. 

From the first girl to find her way into my heart and broke it when I was a teenager, I borrowed the knowledge that relationships end, but some of the love always remains.  She opened the door to learning what love is. 

From my business “father” and mentor in my 20’s I borrowed a saying that he had framed and hung on his office wall (and now hangs on mine): “There is nothing that can’t be accomplished as long as we don’t care who gets the credit”.  From him I learned how to be a leader of people. 

From two old friends, now passed on, I borrowed good feelings for the holiday season.  My friend Bill, who had a very difficult life, always signed his Christmas card with “Happy Hoot and Holler Days”.  Just typing that makes me smile inside and out with delight.  My friend Jan who, always wanted children but was never able to have any, loved Christmas so much that decorations were up year round in her home and during the season there was a tree of some kind in every room, including bathrooms!  From both I learned the power joy has over sadness.  

From my 1st wife I borrowed how to take care of and support someone from the way she did me.  I learned about helping another find some order and sense about life.  I learned from her about giving.  

From my 2nd wife I learned what it is like to love with all of one’s self.  Even through all the pain involved in the ending of the marriage I will be ever grateful for that lesson.  From her I learned loving without reservation. 

Through my son, I learned how to love without any uncertainty.  Since the day he came into the world there as never been a question of my feelings for him and there never will be.  From him I learned how to love fully and wholly.  

From my best friends  M. and C., I borrowed how to be a best friend to someone by the friend they have been to me.  Any time of the day or night I know either would be there for me no matter what.  From them I learned that friendship isn’t a big thing – it’s a million little things.

There are so many I could mention here, but space allows me to go no further.  Yet, I realize this is a good subject to revisit in the future and acknowledge others who left a thread of themself in the fabric of who I am.  For those mentioned here and those not yet written about who helped shape me into the person I am, I say “thank you”.   I am very grateful. 

I almost forgot…. Who is the “one” I thought of when reading what my friend wrote and included at the start of this blog?  I will only say I am very grateful to that person and will write one day here about them.  Just not yet, but I promise I will. 

Love is never a mistake it is either a very good relationship or an even better lesson. Sariah Lynne

Love Letter To Someone I Don’t Know & Never Met

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

“The Love Letter” painted by August Toulmouche

Recently I have read several articles about old love letters being discovered by people unrelated to the writer or addressee.  In one instance a letter discovered was written 50+ years ago and finally made it to the intended recipient.  Another was a note scribbled 200 years ago and discovered folded up tightly in the arm of an antique chair being restored.  In another example a bundle of love letters from World War I was discovered in an antique shop and the finder was trying to locate the family of either the writer or the one being written to.  Reading these stories brought what may be viewed as a silly thought, but one I followed through on.  I imagined a letter I had written being discovered decades after my death.  I decided to attempt writing one I would be pleased for a future third-party to read. What follows flowed without effort from within me.

An old love letter never written from a time long ago to someone I don’t know and never met…..

Dear ________ ,

When we met for the first time is as fresh in my memory as one moment ago.  As of today it was exactly one month ago.  So much has happened in a very short time.  My world is permanently changed and I am altered beyond what I can express with language.  If I never saw you again I would mourn that happening deeply.  Yet what has been awakened within me would remain as a permanent reminder that my heart is not yet dead as I had long thought it was.

How do I express the feelings growing inside me without seeming to be lost in some obvious state of delirium?  My answer is “I can not”.  Science says the initial attraction between a man and woman creates a sort of partial insanity.  Then that explains it.  I am insane over you my darling and I revel in my madness.

How well I know that life never brings a path filled only with joy and delight.  To think so so is an illusion.  I know what fills me now will certainly in time be intertwined with challenge, trial and difficulty.  Am I a lunatic to think now that such things can be borne with grace upon the back of the love I have discovered?  No.  I do not think I am crazy to think that. What is built in the future upon the rock of what we are sharing, can withstand most any force a human can bear.  Of that I am certain.

Yes, I dare speak of love knowing it has not been spoken between us so far.  Am I a coward for writing here instead of looking into your eyes as the words are formed by my heart and released through my voice?  Maybe so, but my feelings are true.  I write because my poetic soul is determined to use beautiful words to express itself to you.  The depths of my feelings demand I can do no less.

Yes, my sweet… I am in love…. with you.  As I write this letter I know as certainly as the moon will rise later tonight and the sun will follow in the morning, what is expressed here in pen and ink is dependable and true.   My restless soul is no longer be searching for something unknown. The purpose of its quest has been found:  YOU!  Without confusion and with complete clarity I say again, I love you ______.   I speak first of what I am nearly certain is within you in like form.  With all my being I hope my perception is accurate!

What we are sharing is admirable and sincere.  Our enchantment is real.  Our bliss is genuine.  I know someday when we share the delight of our selves in physical form our delight will be heightened and multiplied beyond what I ever could have hoped for.  For now I am glad we have resisted what could have happened so easily.  It is a testament that we guard what has been discovered and so want only the best for the gift of love between us.  May we continue to take the time to build a love strong and lasting while resisting haste.

So please know my sweet darling you have touched me as I have never been touched before.  You have reached me on a deeper level than I thought possible.  It has been said by some that loving another makes them feel more complete, yet I question the accuracy of that.  I do not feel more complete by loving you, but I do feel richer. It’s as if I have discovered more of myself through knowing you.  You were the light I needed in order to glimpse who I really am and can be.

After you read this letter, I wonder how you will greet me when next we meet.  My heart vibrates with hope that you will meet me with your heart matched to what I hold inside mine for you.

I love you my darling,

__________

With much gratitude that I am able to do so, I wrote the above openly and without reservation.  It was written with no one specific in mind and formed only from hope. The words traveled from mind to fingers to screen at the moments I thought them just as I thought them without editing.  No longer do I feel the need to hide away any element of my hapless romantic soul.  I no longer fear the real me within and instead here and now express my thankfulness for it.

A day, a week, a month are past,
Another year is by;
Beside her on the open’d desk,
His old love letters lie.
She reads them till the day-light fades,
And ‘neath the moon-lit sky,
She sleeps at rest, for on her breast
Those old love letters lie.
Auguste Toulmouche

What I Learned About Love the Hard Way

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

 1 – Who you marry will affect your life more than you can imagine.  Your life may be better for your choice, worse because of your choice or both at different times.  

2 – Divorce hurts more than you can imagine.  If love is truly present it is a kind of death that takes forever.    

3 – It really is not difficult to fall in love; it is difficult to stay in love. 

4 – There is NO one “soul mate” for each of us in the world.  As a person evolves, grows and changes there are many possibilities over time. 

5 – Being swept off your feet by another person is more about what you feel inside about yourself than what the other person feels about you.

6 – Intimacy takes a long time to grow and develop.  It can become very strong, yet it will always be very fragile.  What takes years to build can be destroyed in seconds or with a single choice. 

7 – Forgiving is a choice and one you make just as much for yourself as the other person.  Often forgiving someone else is far easier than forgiving your self.

8 – Some of the greatest growth of our lives is in love relationships and a good deal of it comes from pain and heartache. 

9 – Just because a good relationship does not last forever does not mean it did not work.  It just means it lasted for its time. 

10 – Be sure to learn from a past bad relationship.  What you do not learn will be a lesson taught to you again.  

11 – If someone is worth your love, then love them without reservation or restriction.  Give your complete heart.  Don’t hold back.  Give your all.  Giving only part of yourself will only get you a part of the other person. 

12 – Every time you loved and were loved there is no mistake.  It was a gift no matter how things may have turned. 

13 – There are few ways in a loving relationship to hurt someone more than being unfaithful.  The wound may heal but there will ALWAYS be a scar. 

14 – Don’t fall in love with who you think a person might be someday.  There is a good chance they never will be.  Only fall in love with who someone is now. 

15 – No matter how much love is present, you will have bad times.  You will fight, you will disagree, and you will have problems.  It is the human condition. 

16 – You can’t love someone you don’t like. 

17 – Scars from past love only tell you where you have been.  Be careful judging a present relationship with them. 

18 – No person can be everything to you, nor can you be everything to any one person.  

19 – No one is perfect.  If you can’t see past some imperfection and bad habits you will be miserable in every relationship. 

20 – Everyone wants to be loved, but some people do not know how to love you back. 

21 – If you are not a good listener in a relationship, you won’t be heard when you speak. 

22 – Secrets are poison and will damage a relationship at the very least and at the most, destroy it. 

23 – Let unimportant things go.  Give in.  Forget about it.  If you don’t, you’ll end fighting much more than you should. 

24 – Loving someone does not make them a better person.  It makes you a better person. 

I am grateful to know these things now.  Lessons learned the hard way, are lessons learned best.  There is deep thankfulness for the ones who loved me who were my teachers. 

There is no remedy for love but to love more.  Henry David Thoreau

A Broken Heart and a Youthful Promise

/ James Browning

The dance was in the school auditorium and the cover group playing was easy to hear in the basement immediately underneath.  Her name was L—– and she was an attractive and well-blossomed 13 year-old.  I was a year older and one grade in front of her.  Except for the dim glow of an outside security light through a window it was dark there in the storage room where we were making out.  Boy, were we!  There were rumors L. was pretty wild and still virginal me was finding that out first hand.  Admittedly I was essentially male hormones on legs at that moment, but when she moved to unzip my pants I pushed her hands away.  After pushing them away several times, I said “I can’t do this”.  L. was angry and mocked my unwillingness with profanity.  I raised my voice to say “stop it” and she stormed out of the room.  We were never together again. 

I was comfortable in my early/mid teens being on first or second base with a girl but not moving beyond that.  Having seen way too much at too young of an age, I had this notion I was going to “save myself” and not be like my parents.  During the less than 8 years my Mother and Father were married they were not faithful to each other and even as children we knew it.  Sex seemed to be a good bit of what their lives revolved around.  For me there was a youthful belief I was going to be different. 

Soon after getting my driver’s license, I asked K— out who I had a crush on.  We went to a movie, the Diary Queen and she suggested parking afterwards.  After a short while making out in my VW Beetle it blew my mind on our first date when she took her top off.  I found her haste to be naked a huge turn off.  After a bit of her pouting and coldly asking “what is wrong with you” I started the car and took her home.  Afterwards we hardly spoke to one another at school.  On one hand there was a feeling of doing right for myself, but also plenty of confusion.  Was there something wrong with me? 

The first girl I fell truly in love with was a year older than me.  I was a junior and E—– was a senior at another high school six miles away from my school.  To have an older girlfriend who went to a different school was a big deal.  We were an item for over a year and went together to each other’s proms.  I was in the audience when she graduated.  We daydreamed sometimes about a possible life together after we finished college.  

It was a June evening less than a month from my 17th birthday when E. took me riding around in her mother’s car. Only in hindsight would I much later comprehend what she had in mind that night.  Once the sun was almost down she turned onto a little traveled dirt road calling it a “shortcut” back to town.  Before long E. parked the car and said “let’s get in the back”.  We steamed up the back glass even with the windows partially open, but nothing but kissing and petting happened.  She wanted more, but I never let things go there.  Silly me imagined we’d do those things one day when we were married and she would be proud of me for being strong and saving myself until then.  Driving back into town, not much was said.  Things had changed.  I just did not know it yet.     

I had a part-time job in a town 40 miles away from home.  To get there I drove through the town where E. lived and each night on my way home I would drive by her house.  It made me feel chivalrous and close to her.  At least it did until the night I was driving by and saw her kissing a guy by his car in her driveway.  I went home with a broken heart.  Later she somehow convinced me her parents had put pressure on her to see others and she gave into their feeling we were getting too serious.  They were probably right, but we continued on and off for a few months even after she left for college.  Those days what was special inside me was mostly gone, but it still hurt badly when we stopped seeing each other.  

About eight months later after having moved 200 miles to live with my Father for my senior year of high school I met D—–.  She was 16 and I was 17 when I fell for her and for a time, her for me.  We were each other’s “first”.  An engagement ring on her finger said we planned to get married once she was eighteen and out of high school although we were way too young to know what we were doing.  Being youthfully blind there was no doubt within that D. was the “one” until just before her 18th birthday she informed me she wanted to see other guys.  I later found there had been others while we were together.  I was shattered and ended up moving a thousand miles westward as I tried to run away from the heartache I thought she caused me.

I changed soon after.  The environment I grew up in caught up with me completely.  A clear conclusion was reached within.  Then and there I decided women used men just the same as they accused men of using women.  I consciously chose to be what I perceived everyone else was.   I just did not know any better.  All that was going on in my life was a more or less normal passage into adulthood.  The problem was I was not normal.  

In hindsight my response was predictable.  No adult ever talked to me about love, sex and relationships.  There were no examples of healthy adult relationships close around me growing up.  Within one personal choice made late in my 18th year I became what I viewed everyone else was to be and dysfunctional ways took over.  Until then I had been faithful to my girlfriends and did my best to be the “white knight” gentleman to each one of them.  That suddenly changed.

Eventually I ended up regretting the direction I chose, but it took decades.  Allowing youthful perception to so darkly color life my life brought dysfunction to every love relationship that followed.  Ignorance is often not bliss.  Lack of knowledge can be emotionally dangerous.  Being blindly dysfunction is corrosive and damaging. 

Today I am grateful to have clear hindsight into where my wayward path began.  Sometimes understanding can only come once one locates the root of behavior.  That insight combined with some therapy and a lengthy period of introspection, meditation and celibacy has helped me to feel fresh, new and reborn.  For that I am deeply grateful.     

Sometimes I wish I were a little kid again, skinned knees are easier to fix than broken hearts.  Unknown

Love, Marriage and Relationships

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

My offering today is not of my creation.  It is a piece forgotten about I found saved in my “good article” folder on my computer.   I started here today wanting to write about why I, like most of us,  have had more “lovers” than we do “true friends”.  I find the collection of thoughts below hint at answers to that quandary better than any original thoughts I am having this morning.  So with thanks and gratitude to Dr. Diamond and apologies for the non-original nature of today’s installment of G.M.G,  I offer “The 25 Most Helpful Things That Have Been Said About Love, Marriage, and Relationships” by Jed Diamond, Ph.D. 

25.  Once a woman has forgiven her man, she must not reheat his sins for breakfast.  ~Marlene Dietrich 

24.  That quiet mutual gaze of a trusting husband and wife is like the first moment of rest or refuge from a great weariness or a great danger.  ~George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) 

23.  Almost no one is foolish enough to imagine that he automatically deserves great success in any field of activity; yet almost everyone believes that he automatically deserves success in marriage.  ~Sydney J. Harris 

22.  The way to hold a husband is to keep him a little jealous; the way to lose him is to keep him a little more jealous.  ~H.L. Mencken 

21.  The concept of two people living together for 25 years without a serious dispute suggests a lack of spirit only to be admired in sheep.  ~A.P. Herbert 

20.  Affairs are just as disillusioning as marriage, and much less restful.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966 

19.  If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.  ~Anton Chekov 

18.  In the early years, you fight because you don’t understand each other.  In the later years, you fight because you do.  ~Joan Didion 

17.  Pity all newlyweds.  She cooks something nice for him, and he brings her flowers, and they kiss and think:  How easy marriage is.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic’s Notebook, 1960 

16.  Marriage is a lottery in which men stake their liberty and women their happiness.  ~Virginie des Rieux, Epigrams 

15.  By the time you’re his
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
~Dorothy Parker

14.   To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.
~Ogden Nash 

13.  Women hope men will change after marriage but they don’t; men hope women won’t change but they do.  ~Bettina Arndt, Private Lives, 1986 

12.  Being divorced is like being hit by a Mack truck.  If you live through it, you start looking very carefully to the right and to the left.  ~Jean Kerr, Mary, Mary, 1960 

11.  In marriage there are no manners to keep up, and beneath the wildest accusations no real criticism.  Each is familiar with that ancient child in the other who may erupt again…. We are not ridiculous to ourselves.  We are ageless.  That is the luxury of the wedding ring.  ~Enid Bagnold, Autobiography, 1969 

10.  The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.  ~Gabriel García Márquez

9.  I figure that the degree of difficulty in combining two lives ranks somewhere between rerouting a hurricane and finding a parking place in downtown Manhattan.  ~Claire Cloninger, “When the Glass Slipper Doesn’t Fit and the Silver Spoon is in Someone Else’s Mouth” 

8.  Love requires a willingness to die; marriage, a willingness to live.  ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic’s Notebook, 1966 

7.  People do not marry people, not real ones anyway; they marry what they think the person is; they marry illusions and images.  The exciting adventure of marriage is finding out who the partner really is.  ~James L. Framo, “Explorations in Marital & Family Therapy” 

6.  Getting divorced just because you don’t love a man is almost as silly as getting married just because you do.  ~Zsa Zsa Gabor 

5.  Marriage must constantly fight against a monster which devours everything:  routine.  ~Honore de Balzac 

4.  Wasn’t marriage, like life, un-stimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well ordered and protected and guarded.  Wasn’t it finer, more splendid, more nourishing, when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt.  ~Edna Ferber, Show Boat, 1926 

3.  Marriage changes passion – suddenly you’re in bed with a relative.  ~Author Unknown 

2. When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.  ~G.B. Shaw, Getting Married, 1908 

And the most helpful thing that has been said about the secret of a happy marriage is….. 

1. The secret of a happy marriage remains a secret.  ~Henny Youngman 

Jed Diamond has been a licensed psychotherapist for over 40 years and is the author of seven books. Diamond is Director of the MenAlive, a health program that helps men live long and well.  http://www.menalive.com/jed-bio.htm

Learning to Love Myself

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

In retrospect I  clearly see a much different past view of myself than the one visible to me today.  Now when glancing in my mental “rear-view mirror” my old behavior is much easier to explain and understand.  Those were the days when my feelings were often thoughts of not measuring up.  No matter what I accomplished it was rarely good enough.  Achievement most often felt flawed.  I frequently nitpicked what was good in my life until there were defects with them of my own creation.

In the past I spent so much time wanting to be loved and hoping love would find me.   My yearning was so engulfing I did not see the special love I sought even when it was before me.  I searched for something I felt empty and lost without.  The reason that the love I so desperately sought eluded me was due to looking in the wrong places.  From the vantage point of now I can see I wanted someone to fill me up with love, which is not how life works.  What I needed had to happen from the “inside out”. 

Those were the days when being alone for more than a few days made me crazy.  I was like some battery that needed badly to be recharged, but could not charge itself.  Love was something I could only see happening to me through some external source.  Simply, I did not love myself.  The energy, the feeling, and the charge I wanted so much needed to come from within myself.  But then I did not know how.     

Today I know that loving my self is mainly about self-respect.  It seems to be the only dependable way I have control over creating love for myself.  In the past when expecting love from an external source, and someone or something did not fulfill my void and fantasies I felt worse than before.  I have learned that no one could love me until I loved myself.  I am able to receive no more love than the amount of love I have for me.  

Attending church in my youth was just something I was made to do.  I got little from it then, or at least that is what I thought.  Turns out, there was quite a bit retained.  It just took many years for me to connect the dots and find anything meaningful about what I learned in Sunday school.  Once thing I do remember comes from the Bible and is found in Corinthians:  

Love is patient,
Love is kind.
It does not envy,
It does not boast,
It is not proud.
It is not rude,
It is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered,
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil
But rejoices with the truth.
It always protects,
Always trusts,
Always hopes,
Always perseveres.
Love does not fail. 

In secular expression, similar thinking is found in the poem “I Must Love Myself” by J. Earl Evans: 

Before I can begin
to love anyone else,
I have to find a way
to first love myself.
Loving myself should be
an easy thing to do.
If I can pat you
on the back,  I can do
the same for me too.
I have to learn to love myself
this is true.
Because no one can love me
as much as I do.
I must find a way
to give myself a break,
and be able  to love myself
no matter what it takes.
I’m not alone
feeling the way I do.
I hope to one day love myself,
just as much as I love you. 

I imagine if I sat here and thought for a good while I could create a fairly long list of the ingredients I used to fall in love with myself.  The items listed would range from the little things to what made the most difference for me.  Within the items with the highest meaning, one has clearly been the most important:  forgiving my self!  Only by letting go of wrongs done, failings and mistakes did the blemishes I placed on myself begin to fade. It took saying “I’m sorry” to a lot of people.  I also had to learn in some cases there is no good to come of trying to express regret to those wronged.  Attempting to do so in some situations only makes things worse (that was a difficult lesson). 

As I think of what I am grateful for this morning, what is on the top of my mind is how I feel about myself today.  It has been a rough and painful path I have walked to get here, but am grateful to have found the route.  I feel the best about myself I ever have and without doubt do truly love myself.  There is a good measure of peace inside me now I never knew before.  My life has been blessed in many ways, but none more so that learning how to love myself.  Many helped me get here.  To all those who have loved me and do love me… thank you for your love and support that kept me on this path until I could learn to love myself. 

The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.  Carl Gustav Jung

Birthdays, Peace, Love and Happiness

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Yesterday was a wonderfully heartwarming day.  Many friends and those dear remembered the anniversary of my birth.  Today I am still aglow with the love expressed to me.  I started making a list of everyone who emailed, texted, called, sent a card through the mail or on line or otherwise wished me a happy birthday.  My intention was to thank each and every one by name here this morning.  However, the list got so long that somewhere in the afternoon I lost track and gave up.  The length of the partial list I did make was humbling and a cue to remember always how loved I am especially in whatever dark moments that may come. 

Accepting that others care about me has always been challenging.  Make no mistake I yearn for the love and affection of those dear to me.  Intellectually I know feeling “less than”, “not good enough” and at best only partially loveable are false emotions and echoes of events and happenings long ago.  Thankfully the resonance of “then” becomes less and less with the passage of time.   I was closed off for many years and that lack I carried serves now to open my heart wider than it could have otherwise.  My immense ability today to feel with greater depth and magnitude is a silver lining discovered within where once was only a big dark cloud.  Thankfulness for that awakening is greater than I can possibly express. 

This morning I want to avoid hiding what I intend to say in a quantity of words that could easily mask my intent.  With that thought in mind, I modestly endeavor here this morning to express my deepest gratitude for the goodness I received from my friends and loved ones yesterday on my birthday.  From those at work who got the birthday cake for me to the old friend who texted from her trip in Israel, from the two dear friends who took me to dinner last night to the other two who invited me, from the simple “happy birthday” words to the cards and gifts I received, “thank you, thank you very much”.  

The time for me to express my feelings to those I care about only exists in the present.  Someday what I mean to say will be no longer possible.  So here below are my thoughts expressed through another’s words.  I place these lines here with thankfulness for the words being lent to me and with deep gratitude for every thread of love shown me.    

If I be the first of us to die,
Let grief not blacken long your sky.
Be bold yet modest in your grieving.
There is a change but not a leaving.
For just as death is part of life,
The dead live on forever in the living.
And all the gathered riches of our journey,
The moments shared, the mysteries explored,
The steady layering of intimacy stored,
The things that made us laugh or weep or sing,
The joy of sunlit snow or first unfurling of the spring,
The wordless language of look and touch,
The knowing,
Each giving and each taking,
These are not flowers that fade,
Nor trees that fall and crumble,
Nor are they stone,
For even stone cannot the wind and rain withstand
And mighty mountain peaks in time reduce to sand.
What we were, we are.
What we had, we have.
A conjoined past imperishably present.
So when you walk the wood where once we walked together
And scan in vain the dappled bank beside you for my shadow,
Or pause where we always did upon the hill to gaze across the land,
And spotting something, reach by habit for my hand,
And finding none, feel sorrow start to steal upon you,
Be still.
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Listen for my footfall in your heart.
I am not gone but merely walk within you.

Taken from The Smoke Jumper by Nicholas Evans 2001 

If you’re alone, I’ll be your shadow. If you want to cry, I’ll be your shoulder. If you want a hug, I’ll be your pillow. If you need to be happy, I’ll be your smile… But anytime you need a friend, I’ll just be me.  Unknown

Soulmates: Love that Lasts a Lifetime

/ James Browning / 4 Comments

“Live is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” wrote John Lennon in what he said was a favorite song he authored (Beautiful Boy).  That quote is part of my personal sayings reparatory and one that I use often as a reminder that my control over what happens in life is very far from a hundred percentage.  Chance, fate, divine providence, luck and destiny are all descriptions of how those other parts of my life just happen.

Had you asked me when I was a fourteen what was ahead for me I would have responded assuredly there was an advanced degree in the sciences, one marriage based on true love that would last a lifetime, at least three children and comfortable retirement by the time I am fifty or at most fifty-five.  It is profoundly interesting that not a single one of those came to pass.  My profession is completely different and unrelated.  I am divorced and have been married twice.  I have one son and at fifty-seven am not retired.  A wiser perspective of today easily tells me I would not have been happy in the sciences, a try at retirement was boring and I am grateful for the son I do have.  However, I do lament the marriage thing.

In my youth I swallowed the fairy tale hook, line and sinker.  With an unstable home life the dream became even more accentuated.  There was Angela P. who I carried a flame for from the time I was in 4th grade all the way through high school.  I just knew somehow she was the one for me and “happily ever after” would come to pass as long as I did not give up.  Closest I ever got was one date to a junior high school dance where she spent most of the time with other people.  I should have taken that as an early sign that real life was not like the movies.  But being the hapless romantic I was even then did not allow clarity to see that.

KFC has a new video that is just over a minute long and appears to have been made for the Internet and not television.  First, let me say I am not pitching KFC in any shape or form as I do have an issue or two with that company and the food they serve.   What I ask is that you forget about the subtle sales pitch at the beginning and end and enjoy the one minute  in between.   Hopefully one of these links will work for you to watch.

http://youtu.be/8uK-mCxVl84

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uK-mCxVl84

The video is about young “like” between a boy and girl turning into love and lasting a life time.  It may be fantasy, but surely somewhere in real life this has actually happened.  Hasn’t it?  I hope so for my heart is touched by this story line.

My saga is quite different and even if  love of youth had flourished and moved into adulthood, I would have screwed it up.  At the age of twenty three I was married for the first time.  Looking back now it’s easy to see in many ways I was just a child marrying another child who was a year younger.  Of course in my early twenties I knew most everything about everything and was convinced I had life under my control and domination.  Looking back now I can see what foolish notions those were.  The perspective of today tells me that until around thirty years old or even a little older I was actually just an adult with a “learner’s permit”.  There is a certain realization now I was no where near a full fledged adult until I was at least out of my 20’s.  Being a student of life it is clear for me to see we change and grow as much, if not more, in our twenties that at any other time in our life.

Today I am much wiser but feel a tinge of sadness for those very old dreams and fantasies.  I know most were unrealistic for me and rare happenings for anyone else.  I have to ask myself why do I and so many others hold on so tightly to those youth-full hopes and dreams of “the one”, a “soulmate”, “happily ever after”, “twin flame” and our “other half”.

I am far from alone in my near mystical belief that goes back 2500 years when we have the first written record of it.  As a character in Plato’s “The Symposium“, Aristophanes presents a story about soulmates. It states that humans originally consisted of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spend their lives searching for the other half to complete them.  Now at least 125 generations later such thoughts of rare love and soul-mates are stronger than ever.

Being discovered in a restaurant and becoming a movie star, discovering oil on your property, winning the lottery, having a successful career where you are admired by millions, discovering that one thing that makes you a billionaire, to be healthy for 110 years, to discover a rare talent within and be admired for it by the masses and such things are extraordinary occurrences.  Such things do happen though.  It does my soul good today to think of childhood love like in the KFC video and imagine it can grow and last a lifetime.   I think it is the rare nature of such an occurrence that makes it so sought after.  There is much gratitude within for my life in all the shapes it has come in, but I am also grateful for the dreams I carry that go far beyond my experience.  Just knowing something possibly exists somehow, somewhere for someone else enriches my days.

 Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and a richness to life that nothing else can bring.  Oscar Wilde

FOLLOW-UP:  A co-worker made me aware of another beautiful video similar to the KFC video I gave links for above.   It’s for John Lewis Department Stores in Great Britian.  Enjoy:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYOsWWKHZVw

A Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

Here in the age of High Definition, black and white movies are getting quite rare on local television and cable outside of a speciality channel or two.  Please don’t misunderstand.  I’m not some fossil who is stuck back in the time when B&W was state of the art for movie making.  Color came of age in the movies and on television during the same period of time I did. 

I have loved movies for as long as I can remember.  Seeing them is a favorite pastime whether at a theatre several times per month, watching favorites again at home or discovering old ones that are new to me on DVD or at the local art theatre.  I am grateful for the hundreds of hours I have spent in interesting places and within fascinating stories from the comfort of my seat. 

Contemporary movies filmed and shown in the new 3-D are enjoyable.  “Avatar” in 3-D was so awesome I ended up seeing in on the big screen six times.  I was always glad to accompany another friend to the theatre who had not seen it but wanted to go (the movie was such a hit it was at the theatres for well over six months).  On the other hand I am glad many new movies like “Super 8” produced by Steven Spielberg was not shot or shown in 3-D.  A friend and I saw that film yesterday and enjoyed the sort of “Goonies” gone sci-fi movie. 

On my list of favorite motion pictures are films from almost all genres: action, drama, science fiction, epic, thriller, love story, family, western, adventure, fantasy, comedy and more.  This long weekend I discovered a great old love story movie that was new to me.  Over the years here and there I have caught a few scenes of “Roman Holiday” but never have seen the whole thing.  It has been on my “to see” list for a long time.  Friday after work I stopped by a favorite used movie store and found a pristine copy of  “Roman Holiday”.  Friday night it was my evening’s entertainment. 

“Roman Holiday” is a wonderful old “G” movie made in 1953.  Audrey Hepburn became a star with this film, in which she played a princess (Princess Ann).  In it she is anxious to have some fun before she is made numb for life by the monotony of “affairs of state.” On a diplomatic visit to Rome, the princess escapes her keepers and goes incognito out into the Eternal City. She happens to meet American journalist (Joe Bradley) played by Gregory Peck, who, recognizing a hot news story, pretends that he doesn’t recognize her and offers to give her a guided tour of Rome. Eddie Albert is Peck’s photographer side-kick in the movie.  Naturally, Peck and Hepburn’s characters fall in love.  In her first major motion picture the 24-year-old Hepburn won an Academy Award for “Roman Holiday” for best actress.  Several other Oscar’s were won by the film as well. 

In one of the more touching scenes in “Roman Holiday” is this dialogue: 

Princess Ann:  I have to leave you now. I’m going to that corner there and turn. You must stay in the car and drive away. Promise not to watch me go beyond the corner. Just drive away and leave me as I leave you.
Joe Bradley:  All right.
Princess Ann:  I don’t know how to say goodbye. I can’t think of any words.
Joe Bradley:  Don’t try. 

I will admit I have never been much of an Audrey Hepburn fan, at least not until now.  Seeing “Roman Holiday” helped me to realize what a good actress she was and one who was attractive in an unaffected way.  Already I have been on Amazon.com looking up her later movies like “Breakfast at Tiffanies” and sorting out which ones I want to see.  In discovering Ms. Hepburn it seems like I have discovered a little vein of gold that I get to mine.  

In the last two days, I have seen two movies.  One was brand new and another is almost 60 years old.  There is no certainty within why I will remember one more than the other.  Sitting here typing at this moment I know clearly it is “Roman Holiday” that will stick with me the strongest.  Why?  Because the movie made me feel good.  However implausible the story may be, its conclusion seemed perfectly fitting and realistic.  

Soon Ms. Hepburn will have been gone 20 years and Mr. Peck died nearly a decade ago.  While I can’t express my gratitude directly to them, I can write of it here with you as my witness.  I am glad I purchased a copy of “Roman Holiday” for I know it will be one I pull out every so often and watch again.  In my heart and mind the characters and the man and woman who played them are immortal.  

 You must know that in any moment a decision you make can change the course of your life forever: the very next person standing behind in line or sitting next to on an airplane, the very next phone call you make or receive, the very next movie you see or book you read or page you turn could be the one single thing that causes the floodgates to open, and all of the things that you’ve been waiting for to fall into place.   Anthony Robbins

Mark Twains’ Version of Adam and Eve

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

“…It is my prayer, it is my longing that we may pass from this life together; a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time; and it shall be called by my name.  But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for he is strong, I am weak; I am not so necessary to him as he is to me — life without him would not be life…” 

Mark Twain, the writer referred here after to by his real name Sam Clemens, was far deeper in thought and feeling than most realize today.  It is the way of history to over time smooth the corners and keep as the known truth a narrow vein of who a person actually was. The first paragraph above was written by Mr. Clemens in 1905 at the end of a fictional short story called “Eve’s Diary”. 

The story was part of a series called “The Diaries of Adam and Eve” he began releasing portions of in 1904, the year his wife died.  It is widely accepted that these stories were largely part of Clemens’ way of dealing with the loss of his beloved wife Olivia, who he called “Livy” for short.  He called her his “rudder” and seemed to lose a good deal of his energy for living after her passing.  Clemens’ health grew steadily worse after his wife’s death and Sam passed away less than six years after she did. 

Before I was ten years old I had taken several wonderful adventures with Mr. Clemens and his friends Tom Sawyer, Edward Tudor, Huckleberry Finn, Jim, Becky Thatcher, Injun’ Joe, and Captain Bixby.  I did not begin to discover Clemens’ Adam and Eve stories until three years ago I purchased a used Harper book published in 1935 called “The Family Mark Twain”.  Within it I read for the first time Clemens’s story called “Eve’s Diary”.  From there I sought out not only the full set of stories of “The Diaries of Adam and Eve”, but also discovered and became enamored with the love story between Olivia and Sam Clemens. No one to whom I have ever mentioned Twain’s Adam and Eve stories ever heard of them, nor has any one ever been aware of Sam’s love letters to Livy.  In a small and humble way I hope to lend change to that.

From a letter Clemens wrote to his wife to be on January 6, 1869: “…I cannot speak of you in tame commonplace language – I must reserve that for the more commonplace people.  Don’t scold me, Livy – let me pay my due homage to your worth; let me honor you above all women; let me love you with a love that knows no doubt, no question – for you are my world, my life, my pride, my all of earth that is worth the having.  Develop your faults, if you have them – they have no terrors for me – nothing shall tear you out of my heart.  Livy, if you only knew how much I love you!  But I couldn’t make you comprehend it, though I wrote a year…”

Later Sam wrote “… I have at this moment the only sweetheart I ever loved, and bless her old heart she is lying asleep upstairs in a bed that I sleep in every night.  If all of one’s married days are as happy as these I have deliberately fooled away 30 years of my life.  If it were to do over again I would marry in early infancy instead of wasting time cutting teeth and breaking crockery…”

 “…Was there ever such a darling as Livy?  I know there never was.  She fills my ideal of what a woman should be in order to be enchantingly loveable.  And so, what wonder is it that I love her so?  And what wonder is it that I am deeply grateful for permission to love her…?

The Adam part of Clemens’  “Adam and Eve” story was done tongue in cheek, yet in an endearing way:  “…This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way. It is always hanging around and following me about. I don’t like this; I am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals…” 

In contrast in a letter to a friend, the married Clemens wrote “…We are very regular in our habits.  We get up at 6 o’clock every morning and we go to bed at 10 every evening.  We have three meals a day – breakfast at 10 o’clock, lunch at 1pm and dinner at 5.  The reason we get up at 6 in the morning is because we have heard that early rising is beneficial.  We then go back to bed and get up finally at half past 9…”  And on the same day Olivia Clemens wrote a friend saying “…We are as happy as two mortals can be…”

Sam Clemens ends “The Diaries of Adam and Eve” with one line that sums up the depth of his emotion for his wife and partner of almost 34 years:  “Wheresoever she was, THERE was Eden.”

So the next time you are thinking of great love stories, remember Samuel and Olivia Clemens.  I have long been thankful for the stories I read in childhood and the wonderful adventures Mark Twain took me on.  Now there is much added gratitude within for the true and real love story of Sam and Livy.  How beautifully inspiring and poetic it is. 

I find it interesting and appropriate that Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born during a visit by Halley’s Comet and later he predicted he would “go out with it” as well. He died the day following the comet’s subsequent return slightly over a hundred and one years ago. 

After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her.  Mark Twain

If you’d like to read more of Mark Twain’s “Eve’s Diary” click here: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=1807607