Love

Song in Your Heart

/ James Browning

Originally Posted on January 13, 2012 by 

From “Give Me Roses” by Marvin L. Cartee

If I am due but one little rose
While living upon this earth,
Let it be given while I’m still alive,
As a token of what I’m worth.

Give me my roses while I’m still alive,
Don’t sit there and hold them and wait,
Don’t wait until the day I am gone
Because then it’s a little too late.

If you love someone don’t hesitate
To tell them you love them today.
Don’t put it all off for tomorrow
‘Cause tomorrow may have passed away.

So if I am due one little rose,
While traveling along life’s highway,
Don’t hold onto that flower too long,
Please give me my roses today.

Dear ________,

I have been unsuccessful in fully expressing how much of a difference you make in my life. The scope of what is inside is difficult to form into words, but I will try anyway. In written form I have put down here at least a little of what I want you to know.

Thank you for being kind to me and noticing when I just need someone to listen. When I have no wish for approval of my feelings, but just need to be heard you always pay close attention to what I had to say. You honor me with that kindness and often help me often bear what you or even I do not understand.

All too aware I am of my shortcomings and faults. Certainly you must see them too, yet you rarely acknowledge them and chose instead to see the good in me. You have always seen more than I have ever believed about myself and tell me so. Never will I see me as you do, but my view of self is far better than it ever could have been without you.

Together with you over time I have learned the joy of doing nothing. Just being together gave hours great value and there was nothing we had to do to make it so. I learned with you that wasting time with a friend is one of the most meaningful ways to cash in minutes of my life.

You have always given me good advice although I have not always followed it. At all times you have my best interest in mind and no other intention. I thank you for your counsel and for never trying to push it on me.

Never was I able to openly express my love of someone as a friend until our friendship. I learned how to hug each time I see you and again when we part. Never was that something I could do before, but through you such expression of affection has become natural and easy with all that I care about.

You have been kind to me when I was not being so to you.
You have been patient with me when my patience was gone.
You have helped me without questioning or without even being asked.
You have been there for me when I needed you to, but could not ask.
You have been my friend even when you did not like what I was doing or saying.
You have never made a practice of saying “I told you so’ although there have been many times you could have.
I have deep admiration your honesty and directness.
I have great respect for your power to think beyond what others see.
I marvel at your ability to express your feelings to others.
I think a lot of your multiple talents and how you put them to good use.
I marvel at how you are kind and never rude, even to those who are to you.
I have high regard for your beliefs and practice of them.
I am often astonished at how much you love and am loved by your family and friends and how those feelings are openly expressed.
I appreciate you just as you are: once single measure of flaws and imperfection and a hundred measures of quality and character.

I am privileged to have you as my friend. I am fortunate to be yours. Without hesitation or reservation, I love you clearly and freely as only a true friend can love another. Thank you for being in my life.

A friend is someone
who knows the song in your heart
and can sing it back to you
when you have forgotten the words. 
Bernard Meltzer

Exploding Fireworks and Ringing Bells

/ James Browning

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I am a lover of love in it in all forms. Mother or Father for a child; a child for parents; a friend for a friend; a lover for their beloved and even the way one can dream up a fantasized person and fall in love with him or her.

A lover’s feelings can be intense and severe when expressed frankly and bluntly. I was moved by the sincere rawness within a letter from “A Wallflower Christmas” by Lisa Kleypas shared below.

“The letter had been crumpled up and tossed onto the grate. It had burned all around the edges, so the names at the top and bottom had gone up in smoke. But there was enough of the bold black scrawl to reveal that it had indeed been a love letter. And as Hannah read the singed and half-destroyed parchment, she was forced to turn away to hide the trembling of her hand.

—should warn you that this letter will not be eloquent. However, it will be sincere, especially in light of the fact that you will never read it. I have felt these words like a weight in my chest, until I find myself amazed that a heart can go on beating under such a burden.

I love you. I love you desperately, violently, tenderly, completely. I want you in ways that I know you would find shocking. My love, you don’t belong with a man like me. In the past I’ve done things you wouldn’t approve of, and I’ve done them ten times over. I have led a life of immoderate sin. As it turns out, I’m just as immoderate in love. Worse, in fact.

I want to kiss every soft place of you, make you blush and faint, pleasure you until you weep, and dry every tear with my lips. If you only knew how I crave the taste of you. I want to take you in my hands and mouth and feast on you. I want to drink wine and honey from you.

I want you under me. On your back.

I’m sorry. You deserve more respect than that. But I can’t stop thinking of it. Your arms and legs around me. Your mouth, open for my kisses. I need too much of you. A lifetime of nights spent between your thighs wouldn’t be enough.

I want to talk with you forever. I remember every word you’ve ever said to me.

If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.

You would say it’s too soon to feel this way. You would ask how I could be so certain. But some things can’t be measured by time. Ask me an hour from now. Ask me a month from now. A year, ten years, a lifetime. The way I love you will outlast every calendar, clock, and every toll of every bell that will ever be cast. If only you—

And there it stopped.”

The letter from Lisa Kleypas’s book is powerful, passionate and gritty just as real  love actually is. Loving someone means going beyond what is politically correct and speaking heart and soul honestly in their full dimensions.

I am grateful there are some with deep feelings about love who write about them (like Lisa Kleypas).  They encourage me to finish the love story book I have been working on for a few years. And I am reminded to settle for nothing less than love that is genuine with plenty of beautiful fireworks.

Love encompasses so much,
reaches so far, and heals so deeply,
that any attempt to describe it,
no matter how poetic, only dilutes it.
Steve Maraboli

Searching For ‘Forever Love’

/ James Browning

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Everlastingly. Eternally. Continually. Incessantly. Always. Endlessly. Permanently. Perpetually. Enduringly. Infinitely. Without end. FOREVER.

Is it the American relentless search for ‘forever romantic love’ actually seeking something unattainable? American culture is filled emphasis on youth, sex and wealth. We are taught to seek those when deep down other things matter more to us. Seems that conflict could be one of the sources with the dissatisfaction with love in the United States and the elusive search for romantic love that lasts ‘forever’.

Researchers no long ago surveyed 1,157 adults from the United States, Russia and Lithuania. Participants were asked to write a free-list answering the question, “What do you associate with romantic love?”

Americans used words that describe feelings like comfortable, mutual, friendship, happy, secure and love.

Russians chose mostly ways a couple can be together such as walking, beach, travel,  candlelight dinner including only two “feelings”: joyful and unreal.

What both cultures have in common is believing the number one most romantic notion is “being together”. Both have ‘sex’ as a top ten most romantic word with Russians rating it #2 (25%) while those in the U.S. placed it down the list at #7 (13%).

russians and americans romantic love top 10

The researchers said, “The idea that romantic love was temporary and inconsequential was frequently cited by Lithuanian and Russian informants, but not by U.S. informants. Furthermore… expressions of ‘comfort /love’ and ‘friendship’ were frequently cited by the U.S. informants and seldom to never by… Eastern European informants.”

The responses from the survey indicated that most of the Eastern European participants viewed romantic love as fleeting, in contrast to U.S. participants, who saw romantic love as more enduring. The Eastern Europe participants also referred to romantic love as “a stage,” “unreal” and a “fairytale.”

Wanting romantic love to last forever has been a contribution to having been unsuccessfully married twice. What is emerging in my thoughts now is how romantic love begins is not where ‘forever love’ must settle to survive in the long-term. All I have to do to confirm that is look at the U.S. list to realize ‘forever’ is forged in fire of romantic love but the flames must settle into other feelings to last. To expect anything else creates a delusion I lived with for many years. Now that’s an insight I am truly grateful for.

Love is like a friendship caught on fire.
In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce,
but still only light and flickering. As love grows older,
our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals,
deep-burning and unquenchable.
Bruce Lee

No One Gets Too Much Love

/ James Browning

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The loneliest days are the ones where you keep company with someone you love who can’t hear you. Holly Robinson

It’s become a quirk of mine to watch couples and how the two interact. What I see all too often saddens me. Many hardly interact at all. Watching a middle-aged couple in a restaurant recently words like indifference, boredom, faded love, apathy and even coldness came to mind. Wedding bands said they were likely passionately in love once upon a time, but apathy and inattention looked to have taken their toll.

…no eye contact…

…no talking…

…no touching…

…no stolen kisses…

…no smiles…

…no eye contact…

…sitting without a word spoken…

…feeling numb…

…feeling lost…

…feeling alone together…

Life is hard. Love is harder. Both are highly worth what it takes to live them well. What I learned with experience is all love is priceless, but amazingly simple to lose. The type that causes two people to want to make a life together is among the most precious. It is also love lost the easiest.

Loving and losing is the classroom where the value of love is taught. My living regrets have over time morphed into hard learned knowledge I am grateful for. No one gets too much love. Most of us barely get enough to get by. If two people truly love each other there should be no restraint in its expression to keep love alive. Love is a fire that must be fueled continually to stay strong and lasting.

Indifference and neglect
often do much more damage
than outright dislike.
J.K. Rowling,

Mother and Father of Love

/ James Browning

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In 1987, a 74-year old rickshaw puller by the name of Bai Fangli came back to his hometown planning to retire from his backbreaking job. There, he saw children working in the fields, because they were too poor to afford school fees.

Bai returned to Tianjin and went back to work as a rickshaw puller, taking a modest accommodation next to the railway station. He waited for clients 24 hours a day, ate simple food and wore discarded second-hand clothes he found. He gave all of his hard-earned earnings to support children who could not afford education.

In 2001, he drove his rickshaw to Tianjin YaoHua Middle School, to deliver his last installment of money. Nearly 90 years old, he told the students that he couldn’t work any more. All of the students and teachers were moved to tears.

In total, Bai had donated a total of 350,000 yuan to help more than 300 poor students continue with their studies. In 2005, Bai passed away leaving behind an inspiring legacy.

If a rickshaw-puller who wore used clothes and had no education can support 300 children to go to school, imagine what you and I can do with the resources we have to bring about positive change in our world!

It is beyond my wildest dream to be as giving as Bai Fangli. It is humbling to realize in comparison I am selfish. But I can become more giving and with inconsistent starts and stops I see myself becomes more so.

Practice giving things away, not just things you don’t care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don’t bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. Robert Thurman

Once upon a time there was a little boy who grew up to be an introverted, inwardly troubled and unsettled man. Over time, life and intention taught him peace, openness and a sense of self that could only be learned through much heartache, grief and challenge. That man is deeply grateful and lives today with a sense of happiness beyond any he dared once imagine. I am grateful to know about him. I am that man.

Gratitude is the creative force,
the mother and father of love.
It is in gratitude that real love exists.
Love expands only when gratitude is there.
Limited love does not offer gratitude.
Limited love is immediately bound by something,
by constant desires or constant demands.
But when it is unlimited love, constant love,
then gratitude comes to the fore.
This love becomes all gratitude.
Sri Chinmoy

You Bring Me Joy (Still)

/ James Browning

Near two and a half years of daily posts now total near 900. Once in a while I skip back months or more to see what was was at the top of my thoughts then. Today I was curious about what was on my mind a year ago. This is what I found:

The years have not caused me to forget. Still there are remnants of feelings strong beyond explanation. You cracked me wide-open and I was never the same again.

Was it because you loved me so unwaveringly deep and passionately?

Was it because you were so exotic and intelligent that you were able to enter my heart so easily?

Was it because I filled your need to be loved?

Or you filled mine?

It was all these things and a hundred more. There was a time we found ‘home’ in each other’s arms.

Once in a great while a feeling of loneliness for you, and you only, still touches down to the quick of my heart. Always I smile with hope that you are well and happy. You married in your 30’s and our contact appropriately stopped not too longer after.

Maybe my memory has elevated what we shared to a fantasy beyond fact. Although our love covered a lot of years it was not long when measured in the actual length of time we spent together. But in weight of what was shared we took a trip around the world.

Times change.
People move on.
Some grow together.
Some grow apart.

Some like us knew each other at the wrong time. I was still a boy in a man’s body pretending he knew what he wanted and needed. I pushed you away because I was afraid to be cared about as much as you loved me.

Hidden away safely, even for the time being from myself, is the only physical memory I have of you: the gift you gave me of a small music box shaped like a heart with a beautiful photo of  you inside. It will go to my safe deposit box once I find it again.

I will always be grateful that once I knew you and for the space you occupy in my memories. The pain has long evaporated and today only a sweet memory remains. There has been no greater love in my life. I’m grateful that whenever I hear Anita Baker singing you always come to mind…

If I can’t see your face,
I will remember that smile
’Cause you’re the finest thing
I’ve seen in all my life.
You bring me joy.
From Anita Baker’s song “You Bring Me Joy” by David Lasley

From the Twisted Metal

/ James Browning

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Every morning I make a posts on two other blogs I keep other than this one. With the description “love is so short, forgetting is so long” www.brokenheartsanonymous.com is centered on the pain and sorrow love can bring. On the flip side is my blog www.loveletterdaily.com which celebrates the sweetness of love at its best (“Passages from Poetry, Love letters and Expressions of the Heart”) .

Do I love “love”? You betcha, but if I ever was lost in the fantasy and make-believe of it, I am over that. However, I am grateful for the reverence I hold for love that is possible between a man and woman. “Once upon a time…” still has meaning!

I have not loved often, but I have loved deeply with all my being. To have felt such deep emotion once is a blessing. More than once is something I never imagined possible, but have experienced.

With each heartbreak I learned about the value of love. My mistakes have been great teachers. The lesson that hurting one I love left great pain in my heart and was an important teaching to suffer through. In my pain was forged a faithful heart.

I dreamed I spoke in another’s language,
I dreamed I lived in another’s skin,
I dreamed I was my own beloved,
I dreamed I was a tiger’s kin.

I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And when I breathed a garden came,
I dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I dreamed I knew the Creator’s name.

I dreamed–and this dream was the finest–
That all I dreamed was real and true,
And we would live in joy forever,
You in me, and me in you.
From “Days of Magic, Nights of War”
by Clive Barker

Healthy love” is the warm cherishing of another person without expectation and clinging. This love “accepts” all aspects of another person and “requires” nothing from them. This love is something we create in our own heart and give as our gift, freely, willingly. With a compassionate, open heart, we truly, sincerely, authentically want the best for the other person: the best seat in the restaurant, the best of ourselves, the best job, the most fulfilling life they can have. We create this contentment in order to share it; we don’t depend on the other person in order to feel it. This “unselfish” love doesn’t need the other person’s happiness in order to exist, but it knows that when we increase someone else’s happiness, everyone’s happiness, satisfaction, and contentment multiply exponentially. Love is an essential part of life. It is the expression of inner happiness and contentment. Karuna Cayton

And so my once dysfunctional love affair with love, is no less strong than before, but has morphed into a positive presence within me. No longer the untrained steed, loves power can take me safely upon its back.  I am grateful for each woman I have loved and who loved me. Each one was a blacksmith of my heart who helped burn, shape and forge the faithful heart within me from the twisted metal it once was.

Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers
within yourself that you have built against it.
Rumi

How To Tell If Somebody Loves You

/ James Browning

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Somebody loves you if they pick an eyelash off of your face or wet a napkin and apply it to your dirty skin. You didn’t ask for these things, but this person went ahead and did it anyway. They don’t want to see you looking like a fool with eyelashes and crumbs on your face. They notice these things. They really look at you and are the first to notice if something is amiss with your beautiful visage!

Somebody loves you if they assume the role of caretaker when you’re sick. Unsure if someone really gives a shit about you? Fake a case of food poisoning and text them being like, “Oh, my God, so sick. Need water.” Depending on their response, you’ll know whether or not they REALLY love you. “That’s terrible. Feel better!” earns you a stay in friendship jail; “Do you need anything? I can come over and bring you get well remedies!” gets you a cozy friendship suite. It’s easy to care about someone when they don’t need you. It’s easy to love them when they’re healthy and don’t ask you for anything beyond change for the parking meter. Being sick is different. Being sick means asking someone to hold your hair back when you vomit. Either love me with vomit in my hair or don’t love me at all.

Somebody loves you if they call you out on your bullshit. They’re not passive, they don’t just let you get away with murder. They know you well enough and care about you enough to ask you to chill out, to bust your balls, to tell you to stop. They aren’t passive observers in your life, they are in the trenches. They have an opinion about your decisions and the things you say and do. They want to be a part of it; they want to be a part of you.

Somebody loves you if they don’t mind the quiet. They don’t mind running errands with you or cleaning your apartment while blasting some annoying music. There’s no pressure, no need to fill the silences. You know how with some of your friends there needs to be some sort of activity for you to hang out? You don’t feel comfortable just shooting the shit and watching bad reality TV with them. You need something that will keep the both of you busy to ensure there won’t be a void. That’s not love. That’s “Hey, babe! I like you okay. Do you wanna grab lunch? I think we have enough to talk about to fill two hours!” It’s a damn dream when you find someone you can do nothing with. Whether you’re skydiving together or sitting at home and doing different things, it’s always comfortable. That is f@&king love.

Somebody loves you if they want you to be happy, even if that involves something that doesn’t benefit them. They realize the things you need to do in order to be content and come to terms with the fact that it might not include them. Never underestimate the gift of understanding. When there are so many people who are selfish and equate relationships as something that only must make them happy, having someone around who can take their needs out of any given situation if they need to.

Somebody loves you if they can order you food without having to be told what you want. Somebody loves you if they rub your back at any given moment… Somebody loves you if they don’t care about your job or how much money you make. It’s a relationship where no one is selling something to the other… Somebody loves you if they’re able to create their own separate world with you, away from the internet and your job and family and friends. Just you and them. Somebody will always love you. If you don’t think this is true, then you’re not paying close enough attention. Ryan O’Connell

I love this piece and am grateful for its blunt clarity. Love is not a special one or two things, it is everything.

Individuals who want to believe
that there is no fulfillment in love,
that true love does not exist,
cling to these assumptions
because this despair is actually easier
to face than the reality that love is
a real fact of life
but is absent from their lives.
Bell Hooks

Sooner or Later

/ James Browning

two women on rocks edit

Love causes pain.
Love cures pain.
And love is a pain.
Where love is,
pain is never far away.
Love will fill your heart,
break your heart
and heal the heart that’s broken.
And it is true that
every love story has an unhappy ending,
sooner or later –
even if the love lasts a lifetime,
somebody dies first,
leaving somebody behind with the pain of grief.
Love is blind – and love opens eyes.
Falling in love with someone of another race,
another religion, or another class will be
both painful and instructive,
sooner or later.
Falling in love with someone
not of your sexual persuasion
will bring pain and knowledge,
sooner or later.
And falling in love with love instead of a person
will pain you and teach you,
sooner or later.
Love is an active verb – a river, not a pond.
Love can make you want to die –
and love can make you want to live.
From the book “True Love” by Robert Fulghum

Years ago I became friends with a woman I worked with who was openly gay. In spite of knowing what I did, in time I began to fall for her. I could not help it. She was beautifully feminine, lots of fun and such a caring soul. I tried my best to keep our relationship that of two good friends. It worked for a time and then one night I tried to kiss her. I was out of line. We both ended up confused. My action started the unraveling of what we shared and in a few months I moved away for a new job. I went east and a while later she went west. Within a year we lost track of each other completely.

D… where ever you are I hope you are living a good and contented life. I pray you found the woman of your dreams and are living contentedly like you hoped. The romantic love that tried to sprout within me for you has mellowed into the kind one feels for family; for a cherished friend. You taught me about how difficult the world can be for a pretty woman who isn’t straight. Some hated you for being true to yourself. Others did not understand. Maybe I didn’t way back then, but I do now. Be happy sweet Angel… where ever you are.

A rose dreams of enjoying
the company of bees,
but none appears.
The sun asks: “
Aren’t you tired of waiting?”
“Yes,” answers the rose,
“but if I close my petals,
I will wither and die.”
Paul Coelho

A Blessing of Grace

/ James Browning

swaddle-baby-636 blur

When getting married the second time, I knew exactly what I was doing. I was motivated by love. In the light of day the internal dysfunction that beat on me constantly could not be seen. And in time it took control again. While my then-wife was not blameless, my behavior is ultimately what brought a divorce.

I really did love her. Always will. There I a debt of gratitude I carry for her for how she helped me when I earnestly got into recovery from PTSD, childhood trauma, compulsion, depression and such. Even after divorce she came around and gave me support for a couple of years before telling me she had to get on with her life and could no longer have contact with me.

In time I have come to accept A. moving on. I understand she did what she needed to do for herself. She remarried and has custody of the child of a family member. She always wanted to be a Mother and I bet she is doing a great job raising that little boy.

Two weeks ago my mobile phone rings. Caller ID says it’s ‘her’. It’s been a long time since we’d spoken and I was surprised. I answer and soon notice it’s a ‘pocket dial’. To no avail I tried making whistling noises and such to get her attention so she’d know I was on the other end of the phone.

For a couple of minutes I listened to her sing along with the little boy while driving. It was touching when she switched to “you are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are gray, you’ll never know dear how much I love you, so please don’t take my sunshine way…”

You see those were the words we sang at least part of to each other just about every day while hugging and greeting each other after being apart. My first reaction was sadness, but it was quickly replaced with good feelings. It was with the knowing the only way she could be singing those words was if she was past the hurt of our relationship.

It was the happiness in her voice that meant the most. It lifted a good bit of my weight off the hook I had kept myself hung on for hurting her.

While I could have kept listening, I smiled and pressed disconnect instead. Initially the thought came I should text her or email to let her know about accidentally calling me, but thought better of it. There would have been no point except to bring a little of her attention to me.

I will never know if A. realizes she called me without knowing it. I actually hope she doesn’t. The accidental phone call gave me a good bit of relief from the guilt I was still carrying about the end of our marriage.

I will always love her, but can do so now easier in a past-tense sense. Knowing she is happy and content living a life that contains her dream of motherhood made me feel good. After all, if a person truly loves another it’s that person’s happiness that is most important. It’s another small example of a divine force at work. What might appear only as an accidental phone call was a blessing of grace. To the source from which all things originate I will always be grateful for this gift.

Love is when the other person’s
happiness is more important
than your own.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.