LOVE MONTH: DAY 28: “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.” – Oscar Wilde
I do not know how anyone can be without love. Even the most solitary person (and I might be one of them!) has love.
My great loves, right after my husband, have been, quite often, animals. Most of you knew Pancho, the dog that stole my heart for 14 years, and his brother Lefty.
There have been a lot of other dogs and I don’t know, for sure, how many cats. I have had parrots, macaws, cockatoos, cockatiels, iguanas, a pony, 2 lambs, 2 goats, hamsters, gerbils, a ferret (not a big fan here), and yards full of owls and hawks and other birds.
I would love to have a buffalo, a giraffe, and any kind of great big cat I could ride on. (I may have watched the Jungle Book too many times-love Kipling!) And an otter and a dolphin (of course!) and a wolf and about a zillion other critters… they are wonderful!
I have loved them all! And I have loved nature! Great love there! I really love how many amazing places I have been and seen and lived.
I love to travel, I really love to travel by hitch-hiking and would love to do it again someday. It is the greatest way to see things I would otherwise have missed and to meet wonderful people. I hope we someday go back to a world where that is an acceptable mode of travel. Shared expenses, companionship, and crazy adventures!
I love hiking, not mountain climbing, but just plain old hiking. Sometimes I want to climb hills, but I love to travel with my feet. They are amazing and take me wherever I want to go. I love my feet and my legs. Wonderful modes of transport.
I love the oceans and the beaches I have been to and would love to travel all over the world, just going to beaches and finding seaglass and treasures everywhere. It would be amazing!
I love growing things…I have a deep and abiding love for gardening and watching the miracle of a blooming seed or plant shoot. It is breath-taking, every single time. I get so excited by my gardens and cannot imagine living in an apartment or place with no dirt. I tried it a couple of times, but it left me empty and sad. Just like living without an ocean. I hope I never have to do it again. I love dirt!
And trees! Not crazy about palm trees, at least most of them. They are rather dull, but I truly adore oak trees and every kind of pine and cedar and birch and aspen and most others. I would love to have another sequoia tree in my yard, but they are sparse where I live now. Maybe I will…
And I love that my life is so full and rich, even though it is mostly devoid of those things others fill their lives with. Little or no work to speak of, love it! Amazing thing called recovery that is a never-ending source of joy and learning and growth. Here is a new one…the V.A., with whom I did not know I would make peace and clear myself of a great deal of old stuff and gain healing…major and miraculous healing…I really love that! And, today, all the people I have ever known. Perhaps today I will meet more to love also.
I love books…geez! The millions and millions of books I have read and held and loved…and now my Kindle and all the great books on there! And music…the source of a great part of my livelihood for many years. And the source of so many great years and moments and lovely times. And movies…and cars…and boats…I could sail all over the world like a hitch-hiker and love it just as much as in a car.
And yoga…a long-time way of life for me. Not just the asanas, but the premise and the body and mind awareness that comes after over 40 years of practice. Being fully in my body and paying attention to what is happening to it and with it. And the amazing grace of moving well and mindfully through my life. And meditation and learning to sit with me and love me and all of this!
When I began this writing, I thought I was less a giver and receiver of love than those who are married, have a family, and other things that do not apply to my life. I was wrong, I have deep and abiding love, and I always have!
And also, spiritual path that takes me to this and this and this and this…LOVE!
Dolphin Hug 