In this Month of Love-Love Life

Has life got you down? Do you slog through the week then your weekend gets swallowed in should-do, must-do, and honey-do? Have you lost that loving feeling? In this month of love put the love back into your life—no silly, not that love. You can get through almost anything if you love life. 

A rainbow and quote. "To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all." Oscar Wilde

Ah, but how do you rekindle such a love? 

How do you love life? Connect with it again. 

No one ever finds life worth living – one has to make it worth living.

– Winston Churchill

Make your life worth living by reconnecting with what you love.

Touch with love—

Touch someone you love. Run your fingers through the hair or skin or lips of your loved one. Feel the messages that touch sends to your body. Touch is a powerful connector, without it we feel unloved.

Listen with Love—

Hear the tone of your loved one’s voice or laugh. Notice how your favorite music affects your pulse, your muscles, your attitude. Listen to the wind or to chimes or to laughter. Do you feel the lift that listening with love gives you?

Try a Taste—

Taste something you’ve eaten all your life and let yourself reconnect to it with memories or images. Savor a bite of your favorite food. How does your tongue respond? 

Sniff a Scent—

Smell your favorite aromas—living plants if possible, perfumes or candles or bubble baths. Immerse yourself in the scents you love. What does your body do when you take in that aroma?

Feel a Texture—

Dig your fingers into your favorite sweater or coat or the fur of an animal—close your eyes and feel it from your fingertips to your toes.

Add Color—

Look for colors you love in nature and in the rooms you occupy. Wear the colors you love. Makes you feel more alive, doesn’t it?

Take a Deep Breath—

of fresh air. Inhale fully, taste and smell and allow that energy inside you.

Look at the Stars—

How big and wonderful our planet and universe is. Feel humbled or small then let yourself reach for those stars, become one with them. Fill yourself with stars and planets and nebulas.

Play—

Choose something from your childhood—hopscotch, jump rope, Candyland…and play. Make funny faces. Do silly animal imitations. Skip down the sidewalk. Be irresponsible for an hour or a day. Have fun. Notice how your body feels, how energy electrifies you. 

Laugh—

like no one is watching. Watch your favorite comedy or comedian. Read a joke book. Give great big belly laughs. No one is watching. And if they are, who cares? You’re having a grand time. 

Photograph of houses silhouetted on sunset. "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." Abraham Lincoln

In this month of love, remember all the forms of love. Love Yourself. Love Nature. Love One Another. And..

Love Life—

Life’s short and sometimes hard. Take time to re-invigorate yourself. Embrace life and all its wonders. Feed yourself all that you love. Love life. You deserve it. 

You Might Be An Alien If–

You might be an Alien if . . . .

  1.  Your spaceship is double parked in the living room.
  2. You use more than 10% of your brain.
  3. You think books are made of paper.
  4. You think telephones are for talking.
  5. You think there is no intelligent life on this planet.
  6. You think being called ‘spacey’ is a compliment.
  7. Gravity is pulling you down.
  8. You know what a Fluvian Nurplex is.
  9. The words “fire your retro jets” doesn’t give you the giggles.
  10. You’ve ever pointed your finger at someone and gone ‘ak-ak-ak-ak’
  11. You’ve ever told someone to ‘get offa my cloud.’
  12. You’ve ever said ‘I have powers you can only dream of.’
  13. You’ve ever said ‘I’m signaling my people.’
  14. The term “Big Bang Theory” means something other than the title of a television show.
  15. You like jokes that start with You Might Be an Alien.

Do you know what a Fluvian Nurplex is? Who said ‘Get offa my cloud?”

If you have another You Might Be an Alien line, please join in the fun!

 

Be a Child

My DH and I were talking at dinner the other night about our lives as creative types and differences in the ways we perceive things. As is often the case, our discussion covered a wide range of possibles from the highly sensitive person to the mundanes who don’t understand us to the different modes of perception (he’s visual and I’m verbal). My DH said he thought that neither he nor I had ever lost the ability to be a child.

Children perceive the world differently from adults.   Whether you are a writer, an artist, a laborer or scientist, I think all adults should remember to be a child, at least once in a while.

Artists

“All children are artists. The problem

is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
~ Pablo Picasso

Image of a child drawing on the sidewalk
Safe Places to Play by National Assembly For Wales / Cynulliad Cymru. CC Flickr

Use ALL Your Senses

“Children, like animals, use all their senses to discover the world.  Then artists come along and discover it the same way all over again.”

~ Eudora Welty

Toddle playing in sand on the beach
Child on Beach by Chris P.  CC Flickr 

Be Puzzled

“What are the conditions of the creative attitude, of seeing and responding, of being aware and being sensitive to what one is aware of?  First of all, it requires the capacity to be puzzled.
Children still have the capacity to be puzzled.” 

~ Erich Fromm

 Make Believe

“As children, we all live in a world of imagination, of fantasy, and for some of us that world of make-believe
continues into adulthood.”
~ Jim Henson

boy playing in box
By epSos.de. CC Flickr

Wonder

“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”  ~Albert Einstein

Photo of girl open mouthed in awe
By quinn.anya. CC Flickr 

DANCE

“Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn’t music.”

~William Stafford

Kids at Delridge Daycamp
Seattle Municipal Archives.  CC Flickr

Believe in the Heroic

Children don’t have to be told to believe in heroics or heroes.  They live their fantasies.

“Nurture your minds with great thoughts.  To believe in the heroic makes heroes.” 

~ Benjamin Disraeli

Photo of Bane and the Boy Wonder
Bane and the Boy Wonder by Digital_Rampage. CC Flickr 

Be A Child

“Like a forgotten fire,
a childhood can always flare up again within us.”
~ Gaston Bachelard

So play, imagine, be curious, see the world with awe through child-like eyes. Believe. Being a child, for just a little while, can change your world.


I’d love to hear from you. Please share. Do you take time to be a child? How does being a child help you as an adult?