Tag Archives: Jungian quotes

Jul16

30 Days of Jung — Day 30: #Conscience #Attune #Harmony #Spirit #Confidence #Intuition

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This is it! The last day of 30 Days of Jung! Are you as bittersweet as I am? I sort of can’t believe I started this a month ago. Yet, it is just like me to start something (a 30-day program) in the middle of something else (like a month). I have learned a lot about myself and I hope you have learned a lot about yourself while also learning unsolicited information about me.

>insert: HUGE AWKWARD SMILE AND NERVOUS LAUGH.<

The first post was on the 19th anniversary of my wedding’s rehearsal dinner and I wrote about the chemistry between two people and the last one is about our intuition.

Welcome to Day 30 of “30 Days of Jung,” my series, wherein (soon, I will start repeating myself, like now) I take a famous quote of Carl G. Jung‘s and try to make sense or refute or invert or disembowel it or where I turn into a heaping pile of mush because of it in 1,000 words or less.

If you don’t know who Jung is, he formulated the theories of introverted and extroverted personalities, the stages of individuation, the basis of the “Meyers-Briggs” personality (INFJ / ESFJ, etc.) tests. He’s a “father” of modern-day psychoanalysis. In short, he’s a badass. But he’s dead, so he can’t be with us today.

Here is today’s:

“Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune. ”

I guess the only way I get to pick an ending here is to choose another quote, but I won’t. I’ll stick with this one because I know there’s a message in it for me.

When I am about to say something I don’t mean or that I shouldn’t say or which needs rephrasing, I often get a physical sensation and I’d like to say that it’s subtle, but it’s not. In fact it’s so NOT subtle that I have to work consciously to ignore it, steam ahead, push through and possibly wreck something.

It’s a sensation in my solar plexus and it’s an equivalent to a tap on the shoulder, except that it’s a tug on the gut. (That was almost a palindrome.) And if I had to put a “word” on it, it would be this: “No,” or “Stop,” or “Don’t” or “Wait.” Sometimes I notice it most when I don’t mind my own business. When I speak for others, when I talk over people, when I tell people what to do or try to influence them when I have no right. Hypocrisy and / or being a busybody are HUGE vibration messed-uppers.

I suspect that tug is my “something is out of tune.” (Jung was not very clever with the analogies or metaphors… ‘tune’ — what are we on Broadway?).

Actually, I eat my words now.

I had to stop what I was doing a moment ago and save this post. But I didn’t have a title, so I had to think of one and as I typed “attune,” I thought of our spirit being attuned to someone or something or ourselves and then I thought of “harmony” as in being in harmony with our actions and our thoughts and then I got the gist of this quote, that when Jung said ‘out of tune‘ he might have been talking about our inner conscience (of course and obviously), but I also get the sense that he was talking about the larger cosmic vibrations and harmonies and that when we fight them, we do know it and we can feel it; an unsettling, a twitch, a nagging thought….

I am sitting here nodding at myself like a churchgoer, looking at the NO ONE sitting next to me with a knowing glance, “Mmm-hmmm…”

I’m such a dork.

Anyway, yes, we do know when we are acting against our better sense and our better selves.

When we gossip. (Guilty.) Is it for malice or good? 

When we yell. (Yup.) Can we be kinder and still make our point?

When we know, without hesitation, that what we are considering doing needs more time.

When we put ourselves last. When we ignore our intuition and allow unhealthy people in our lives. When we enable. When we become codependent. I know this.

So how do we change this? How do we become attuned to the correct way and the healthy way to act?

We slow down.

We listen and don’t feel a need to respond right away.

We don’t judge.

We allow ourselves the very thing we’d allow anyone else: time.

I was one of those people who had to have the answer, had to be a first-responder, had to have a witty retort because I wanted people to like me. I just read a great post, “You Like Me? You REALLY Like Me?” by Mary Swan-Bell. It resonated with me because this is where Mary’s taking the gloves off and is saying, “I don’t need you to like me anymore,” and I totally dig that. She’s not against anyone, she’s just “FOR” herself. She’s “pro-Mary.”

I’m in this place, a lot like where Mary is, where I’m at peace with where I am and that I’m gonna be OK when someone doesn’t like me. That is my natural state: neutral and at peace. I can feel it when my conscience is telling me, “This isn’t what you want to do. You know it. Stop faking.” The best part is that it’s all on me when that happens: I can stop what is unhealthy or out of tune it as much as if I decide to start what is healthy or in tune. All of us have this opportunity: we don’t have to wait for something to react to, we can just be in tune.

That concept used to bother me a few years ago. I was afraid that if I became neutral that I would lose my “edge”: my sharp wit and my clever observations. It’s still there, I still make mistakes, I still joke around, but I don’t feel a need to do it to Be Someone Else. I do it when it feels right. There’s no more jockeying for position.

My yoga retreat is on my mind a lot now; I’m clearly distracted by it and I feel like my writing is affected by it all. I’ve been receiving an email a day for the past couple days from the retreat organizers and I’m getting nervous and happy and curious. They sent me our daily schedule and it’s going to be so jam-packed! From 6am until 6pm we will be in an actively yogic frame of mind: learning, chanting, eating, sharing, posing, meditating and practicing. It’s going to blow my mind because I want it to. I’m ready.

I know how I feel whenever I leave my twice-weekly traditional 90-minute yoga classes: like I’m a feather in the air, gently wafting down to the sidewalk… I can only imagine how I’ll be after 12 hours straight every day for 16 days. I might glow and float.

Yes, the diet concerns me: Nothing but fruits, vegetables and dairy for the entire time. Fruit likes me. I’ll just leave it at that. Some are predicting I’ll be “cut” and toned; I really have no clue; I think I’ll be different… not sure how… In the summer, I’m a vegetarian for the most part. Except for those burgers last night… and three nights ago… oh, and the Costco pizza…I guess I’m really not that much of a vegetarian. Pesto? Does pesto count? And lots of brie? If I could have a yoga mat made of brie, I’d be all set.

So I plan to write again soon this week; I do want to tell you about my trip to rainland Canada. I have lots of pictures and had a great time.

I can feel though that I’m starting to peel back, separate a little from “this world” that I’m in now; I’m already mentally packing for my retreat; thinking about where I’ll hide the Slim Jims and the Cap’n Crunch and I wonder…. is it out of tune to think like that? I’m partially kidding; I talk a good game… I’m pretty sure though that I’ll be ready to commit. After all, I don’t do anything halfway. So much for neutrality. But I’m excited! I start this weekend for a quick three-day primer, then shove off on the 25th for the mountains.

Sigh…

Ok, back to the quote. Yes…

So listen to your gut and you’ll be in tune. It’s really fairly simple. You’ll know when you’re not; you’ll feel it and it won’t feel right. You’ll have a hard time letting it go and have a deep soft, yet nagging need to make it right or different. That’s good. Listen to it. Don’t be afraid to do the right thing. It will make you uncomfortable and that’s when you know you’re growing. We all know how it feels to have growing pains. If you’re in constant comfort, you’re doing something wrong. A good life is one that makes you do a double-take every once in a while.

So … yeah. I’m at my word limit. 30 Days of 1000+ a day. This has been great. I feel like asking someone to take a photo of me with all you guys…

Will you sign my yearbook?

I almost feel like Dorothy when she was about to start clicking her heels…

Thank you. Really, thank you for reading whatever you have of this series. I plan to post while I’m away, if the spirit moves me. Maybe just a picture every once in a while or maybe some really heavy-duty observations. We will see. But I already have my title: “Missives from the Mat.”

…bye! for now! 🙂

xo

Jul15

30 Days of Jung — Day 29: #Creativity #Artistry #Play #Enjoyment #Fun #Mind #Intellect #Psychology

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It is getting harder and harder to write these posts; not because I am unable to tackle the content (or at least sneak up on it) but because things are getting pretty ramped up around here at the Grass Oil compound.

I love this quote and it makes me think of some of my favorite people who are artists, illustrators, bloggers, photographers, designers and writers.

Welcome to Day 29 of “30 Days of Jung,” my series, wherein (soon, I will start repeating myself, like now) I take a famous quote of Carl G. Jung‘s and try to make sense or refute or invert or disembowel it or where I turn into a heaping pile of mush because of it in 1,000 words or less.

If you don’t know who Jung is, he formulated the theories of introverted and extroverted personalities, the stages of individuation, the basis of the “Meyers-Briggs” personality (INFJ / ESFJ, etc.) tests. He’s a “father” of modern-day psychoanalysis. In short, he’s a badass. But he’s dead, so he can’t be with us today.

Here is today’s:

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. ”

Hell yeah!

We all need time to wind down. Playing is a necessity for not only our bodies but also our minds, yet many of us think that the way to do anything if we don’t first succeed is to try harder not smarter. Sometimes that “smarter” means taking a break.

I know that when I’m overwhelmed with something that if I put on music or try coming at it from an entirely different angle, I can achieve better and smarter results … how do I know? Because I can be heard saying, “I don’t know where that idea came from… but it works!”

Remember “SHOW YOUR WORK!” in math? Ugh. My kids hate that. I do too. Why can’t we just have the right answer and be done with it?! One of my kids has a friend who arrived at the correct answer to a problem but in an entirely different way and even though his answer was the correct one, his instructor DID NOT award him the points for his answer because he didn’t do the formula she taught.

Bullshit. Sometimes this stuff just comes to us… we can’t explain the “inspiration” it just happens.

One of my favorite aspects of the creation of a human or carbon-based life form is that we grow when we rest. Our muscles regenerate and get bigger NOT when we work them, but when we rest them. My oldest son has grown one inch in two months this summer. I expect that he’s got some more to do and he’s sleeping like a dog.

This is a fantastic fact: our brains work and settle and rewire when we dream or are tinkering on something else… Paul McCartney wrote “Yesterday” when he was dreaming:

“I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, ‘That’s great, I wonder what that is?’ There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th — and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I’d dreamed it, I couldn’t believe I’d written it. I thought, ‘No, I’ve never written anything like this before.’ But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!”

Little kids. They play all the time and they solve problems when they play.

Lots of things were invented by “mistake” or through play or dreaming. It’s when our minds are relaxed and not pommeled with “NO! THAT’S NOT IT!” that they come up with their genius:

Poor Don Music. He just needed Carl Jung to help him out and take a break or just write another song.

I know that about myself, some of my best writing comes when it’s not forced; and some of my best humor comes when I’m not trying to be funny.

My husband was looking over some resumes for hires on his staff and we were saying how so many of them are so different from others, that despite the “rules” of resume writing, there seem to be some deviations and then I started laughing and he looked at me and asked what I was laughing at, did he have something coming out of his nose or something and I said, “No, it’s not that; it’s that I would love to see a resume from say… George W. Bush or Barack H. Obama (just being fair with the middle initial treatment, y’all…) and then I thought this:

Screen Shot 2013-07-15 at 1.38.26 PM

And it dawned on me… DO THEY? DO THOSE SEARCH ENGINES LOOK FOR THOSE WORDS? of course they do…

But that fun spawned when we were playing, laughing and imagining…

That’s the point. The playing is a total requirement for innovation. Playing is a requirement for banter, which can turn into debate, which can turn into an argument which can turn into fisticuffs which can turn into

I know this post is a little off the wall and slightly more irreverent than my others, but that’s the point.

We have to laugh.

And play.

In order to grow. Forcing never works.

Thank you.

ps – this is my 300th post. yay me!
Jul14

30 Days of Jung — Day 27: #Happiness #Balance #Humility #Survival #Thrive #Costco

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I can’t help it. This quote makes me smile and think we’re all gonna be alright after all, like the theme song of the “Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Welcome to Day 27 of “30 Days of Jung,” my series, wherein (soon, I will start repeating myself, like now) I take a famous quote of Carl G. Jung‘s and try to make sense or refute or invert or disembowel it or where I turn into a heaping pile of mush because of it in 1,000 words or less.

If you don’t know who Jung is, he formulated the theories of introverted and extroverted personalities, the stages of individuation, the basis of the “Meyers-Briggs” personality (INFJ / ESFJ, etc.) tests. He’s the “father” of modern-day psychoanalysis. In short, he’s a badass. But he’s dead, so he can’t be with us today.

Here is today’s:

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”

― C.G. Jung

I am very late with today’s post; a good 12 hours late. It’s OK though because real life has taken over in a big way and as much as I’ve been enjoying this little “therapy retreat” as one of my favorite readers called it, all good things must end and soon, we will be at our end here with this Jungian journey.

My, what a ride is has been though, huh? I will have no choice but to write a retrospective when all is said and done in a few days. Then I’m off to begin phase 1 of my yoga training; I sense that my brain is the perfect amount of mush now and is ready to take in even more woo-woo, as Kelly DeBie and Lillian Connelly and I call it.

I love the quote.

I often hear from my children (about whom I’ve not written much lately, sorry boys) from one to the other sounds of mirth or rage or defiance or jocularity or surprise or wonder and even, dare I venture: support. Sometimes, though, I just like the silence.

The silence means they’re busy. Maybe even reading and so it is often that I marvel over the silence and am equally thankful for the noise, because as Jung said, there is always a balance, and were it not for the balance we’d have no way of appreciating anything.

How would we know noise if we didn’t know silence?

How would we know joy if we didn’t know pain?

How would we know right if we didn’t know wrong?

I could go on and on… one more? Ok…

How could we know bad cereal if we didn’t have the goodness of Cap’n Crunch? (It has been too long without a Cap’n reference; I couldn’t help myself.)

But where do we strike the balance? Or do we strike the balance? We can be excessive. For instance, today I was at Costco. (I could just stop there….) I had this moment of quandary: how do I strike the Jungian balance of being a part of the world, but also maintain my selfness, my autonomy and my need for progress when the world seems to want to just stand there? And how do I get to stand still and just be, try to grasp what little I can of the time that fleets before me when the zeitgeist of the world moves too quickly for my taste?

Balance. Karma. Give. Take. Cheese. Combo.

I needed to order a pizza to bring home for lunch. Two registers were open, but the twenty or so people standing in the mob-blob in front of the registers were sort of mooing, bleating and clucking to themselves; there was no order, and it wasn’t as though they were a group trying to choose from the great vastness of the menu: plain or pepperoni, sandwich or a hot dog? Vanilla or chocolate? If they were standing in front of the soda machines, I could understand it, but not where they were.

One of the cashiers was trying to get the tall peoples’ attention, anything… he was waving enthusiastically, he said, “This register is open! I can take your order!” and the answer was more mooing and croaking.

Finally, an adroit member of the Costco cashier team said loudly, her hands cupped against her laugh lines (they’re always laugh lines on this cashier): “Two. Lanes. Are. O-PEN. Form! Two! Lines!” and her arms spread out with each index finger pointing at a beige IBM terminal, their green LED screens flashing, “Costco Food Court.” The mooing and clucking became “ohhh”-ing and “agh”-ing and it was as if Moses himself had divided the red sea.

The man in the white shirt ahead of me clearly chose the left lane. I stayed behind him. A mass of people moved to the right. I didn’t care or notice who was behind me, but I was definitely always directly behind this man and his white shirt. About four people were ahead of him. Out of the corner of my eye, behind me, definitely behind me, was this little woman and her two grandchildren. She reminded me of a very short Olympia Dukakis, one of my favorite actresses.

Was she in the right lane? Was she in the left lane? Was she aware? Was she accustomed to lanes, to order in Costco, the likes of which our Food Court Moses had manifested?

I could sense my space was being infringed upon.

I didn’t like it.

Normally, I honest to goodness would absolutely let anyone get in front of me who was encumbered by small children; I have been there and I would absolutely would allow a grandparent. Normally.

Yet, I wasn’t sure what she was trying to do. Read the menu? She wouldn’t look at me. But she got closer. Her wee charges pulling one arm one way and another arm the other way. Her salt & pepper hair was wavy and sagacious. One of the children moved directly in front of me; between me and Mr. White Shirt.

I was tired. I was hungry and I was totally aware of my Jungian responsibility to this woman: we are all connected. We are all one people. We are all the same. ‘Cept she wasn’t making eye contact. She started to move in.

The lane to the right was moving along; it was a couple people longer than mine, but it was moving as people were making orders like I would be and not actually need food served at the moment.

She stepped right into my path. She bumped into Mr. White Shirt. He turned to her, she said, “Oh! Sorry,” and she still didn’t look at me.

I cleared my throat as if I had the plague and I said to her, “I’ve been behind him since the lane formed. What do you need? Are you in a line?”

“It’s no beeeg deeeeeal! It’s nooo beeg deeeel!” She said, nodding and smiling.

I had to pee. I also had to find my husband who was still shopping. I was afraid he’d get the wrong 5-gallon tub of mustard. I hate it when he does that. I also had to order a pizza and I was also supremely thirsty.

I was still aware of my connection. “We are all one. We all have sadness and happiness; we all have fears and confidences; we all have wants and aversions…”  I said to myself.

I didn’t care. I mean, I did, so I tempered myself, but I didn’t care.

“It is a big deal; I need to order a pizza and I don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve been behind him. Are you with him? You can get behind me or that other line…” I didn’t growl, but I was firm. I also stood about a foot taller than she did; and I’m just 5’5″.

“It’s no beeeg deeeeeal! It’s nooo beeg deeeel!” She sings, smiles again.

White Shirt turns to look at me. He’s cute; looks like Benjamin Bratt. He looks at her. He turns back around.

She goes over to the other line.

I stand there, unfazed by it all, waiting for my turn to tell them “Pizza please: half-combo, half-plain, two drinks please.” It would be at least two more people ahead of me before I got to do that.

I look over and she’s already done. She’s on her way to the fountain drinks. I laugh to myself. She putters over to a table, I place my order and we go on our ways.

But the whole time internally I’m saying to myself, “Jung would beat me with his dead femur right now if he were here. He just would. I should have given my space to that woman; I should have gestured: you go ahead…” But I reasoned, “I didn’t know what she wanted. She just sort of bobbed in and out. She finished her business way before I did…”

And so I sit here, clearly exceeding my word limit as I explain this to you both, wondering: was that a balance today or was I just a Costco shrew? I try so often to be different from my fellow humans: to be aware (which I was), but to make room, to allow for the randomness and be equanimous (Wayne) with what’s going on. But today I felt as though I were the ignored one, as though she were trying to inch in, flashing her smile, avoiding eye contact and tweeting her “It’s no beeeg deeeeeal! It’s nooo beeg deeeel!” and I didn’t like it. Could’ve been cultural.

Gah! I’m such a shrew! Oh! Forgive me Olympia Dukakis of Costco!

I’ve read a lot over the years about “compassion” and how we can sometimes neglect ourselves for the benefit of others all in the name of compassion. For some reason today, I decided not to do that. Was I feeling a balance?

And she finished before I did. She moved on and I got to be.

“It’s no beeeg deeeeeal! It’s nooo beeg deeeel!”

Ain’t that the truth?

Thank you.

Jul11

30 Days of Jung — Day 25: #Love #Control #Domination #Submission #Abuse #Power #Corruption

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This one.

Hmm. And to think that yesterday I was complaining that Jung didn’t mention “love” in any of the 30 quotes that came up to write about because, well… he hadn’t. And I wouldn’t go so far as to say that this time he’s talking about LOVE in the sense of commitment, the bond, the relationship, the vulnerability of LOVE, but …

Welcome to Day 25 of “30 Days of Jung,” my series, wherein (soon, I will start repeating myself, like now) I take a famous quote of Carl G. Jung‘s and try to make sense or refute or invert or disembowel it or where I turn into a heaping pile of mush because of it in 1,000 words or less.

If you don’t know who Jung is, he formulated the theories of introverted and extroverted personalities, the stages of individuation, the basis of the “Meyers-Briggs” personality (INFJ / ESFJ, etc.) tests. He’s the “father” of modern-day psychoanalysis. In short, he’s a badass. But he’s dead, so he can’t be with us today.

Here is today’s:

“Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.”

‘Shadow’?? What did this dude’s mother do to him?

End the count at 1300.

Ok. ‘Will to power.’ Meaning there is no drive, no deliberation as in “thy will be done” -will? Or … please, bear with me as I’m a word freak:
well? which will will it be?

well? which will will it be?

I’m going out on another limb here and I’m gonna say this: it doesn’t matter. I’m going to try to break this down in a way that I can handle:

“When love rules, no one needs to execute power over another. When power rules, love (as aforementioned) can not survive. They are mutually exclusive.”

And this applies to platonic love too.

Ok. I can move forward now.

This is very true. I’ve seen abusive relationships — they’re all about power and domination and control; it’s never about “love” or not having needs met or unreasonable demands.

Sometimes the control is not overt: sometimes it’s a matter of trust which becomes corroded over time. For example, say a couple is married, they have a couple kids. One spouse has serial affairs on the marriage (not just on the other spouse, because I believe these affairs are violations of the family). One of the spouses clearly thinks s/he has domination over the other, why else would s/he stray? The abused partner ends up wondering what s/he has done wrong to create this climate of infidelity? Surely it must be his/her fault because no reasonable person would stay faithful to such a cretin. And so now we introduce other germs into the petri dishfunction.

As a child, I couldn’t fix my mom. I felt it was my fault. She never asked me to fix her, but the directive was there and I failed miserably. I felt it was my fault or that I was the reason for her condition. It’s taken me oh… 37 years to figure out that I wasn’t the cause, or the cure, and another eight years to actually believe it without rage.

There are other “reasons” in an abuser’s mind, for sure. Those “reasons” don’t matter. The action is what matters here. Jung said it before, “you are what you do, not what you say you’ll do” (Day 5).

I couldn’t care less if someone is feeling “unloved” or “disconnected” from their marriage partner. Grow the hell up and learn to talk about it. Own your stuff. I have said this time and again: if you’re gonna stray, get a divorce first. But that’s too expensive. Then DON’T STRAY.

I digress. Love does this to me.

If you have love, you don’t want to hurt the other person because when they hurt, you hurt. And I don’t suggest not hurting because you’re pain averse about yourself, but because you’re pain averse for the other person. It’s not codependence, it’s maturity and compassion that suggests that “not hurting the other person” is the way to go.

You don’t need to control the other person with betrayal, control, lies or abuse. There is no need for those games because love and trust fill the voids and give voice and confidence to the wounded — we have to learn to talk to each other again.

Texting doesn’t count.

Facebook doesn’t count.

YouTube doesn’t count.

Email doesn’t count.

Voicemail doesn’t count.

A phone call is a start.

A face-to-face is the best.

There is no shame in feeling wounded. There is no shame in needing comfort or expressing vulnerability. There is no shame in saying, “I feel left out and I don’t know what to do…”

There is shame in taking off, cheating, lying, continuing, hurting and not stopping and acting as if everything is all hunky-dory. There is shame in blaming your inability to keep your relationship (friendship, brother/sister, cousin…) solvent on the other partner. As for the legal stuff: good lord, last time I checked two consenting adults make a marriage. Or a common law marriage, or a dedication to one another.

TALK ABOUT IT, PEOPLE.

Jung is right. He is dead and he is right. This might be the easiest quote to have whateverized. I don’t feel like a lump of mush, I feel like shouting from the rooftops,

“Love is love: vulnerable, real, allowing, soft, kind, forgiving, bumbling, bashful, infinite and tender. Control is abuse, constriction, restriction, domination, fearful, paranoid, hurtful, finite and mean!”

The two simply can not ever be confused.

The moment you have to ask, “When she tells me I look like crap in that shirt and asks me why I always look like I ate out of a toilet” you know it’s not love she’s conveying to you.

The moment you have to wonder if, “When he tells me the house looks like crap and the food I make reminds him of a garbage can” it’s not love.

The times when you might wonder where s/he’s been, why s/he doesn’t come home, why s/he doesn’t return a call (keeping in mind that you’re being reasonable in your needs), “will this ever get better?” it’s time to look at things and possibly yourself.

It’s OK to feel disappointment in a relationship, it’s OK to have needs and wonder what’s going on from time to time… but you also have to wonder if your needs are excessive, if your interests aren’t mutual, if your intensity isn’t matched. Could YOU be controlling? I dunno. I’ve caught myself a couple times being the wicked witch of the east, “and she’s worse than the other one…” and that’s on me. My husband is a very reasonable man. I have become reasonable. But I’ve never been possessive and that to me equates with control.

I’ve always had a sort of odd detachment in my relationships, taking it from the standpoint that autonomy is really the only thing I can always rely upon. That doesn’t mean that I’m not a good partner or a vested wife; I am absolutely. It’s just that my outlook has always been (likely due to my relationship with my mother) to not really count on other people too much. To not make a habit of it… sure it’s nice to have a buddy who can help you change a tire in the rain, but chances are… it’s best to learn how to do it yourself too.

There is no control in love. There is no forcing. There are no demands.

In love, there is freedom and security.

In love, there is delight and mirth.

In love, there is discovery and wonder.

In love there is GROWTH.

All this goes for “self love” too! Don’t think for a minute that it requires two people to have value in yourself — in self-love there is no control or domination or power. You have to let yourself, as you would a friend or a lover: fall down, make mistakes, act lost, act goofy, need more, need less, be unpredictable, be sad, be loud, be quiet, be creative, be dry, be happy … just be. Really… just BE.

I wrote a phrase on Facebook the other day, I woke up with it: “Those who belittle will always be little.”

Thank you.

ps – five more days to go. how fast it’s all gone by!!! thank you for sticking it out with me guys!!! what to do next? do you have any requests? i’m game!