Love Romantic and Remembered, “As It Was”

A love so rich, so inspiring,

Was caught that day—the ‘day of admiring,’

We both sought the soul-mate of our desires,

Truly, indeed, our souls afire.

And how do we conjure a love so great,

Prepared for passion like a spring in a gate,

We were sprung forth in zeal and imagination,

Nothing conceived halting our marvellous creation.

Presence shot forward, a scene to see,

Our meetings together under that tree,

Your tongue-laden kiss a taste to die for,

My arms around you—together a core.

As the ancients have said, two are better than one,

We agree, of course, right until our last days are done,

But those memories at first, the sexual urge to be won,

A golden thirst, it was the utmost fun.

Romantic love, a stunning reality,

Thrilled at the prospect, wrought in the alley,

We giggled and ate and walked and rode,

All along toward our marital abode.

And as our day approached, came and went,

We were together and had that time spent,

Once upon a time we dreamed of this,

Simply golden and resplendent, the cherished bliss.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

When we consider the passage of romantic love we see but a glimpse, surely, of heaven. But this love makes fools of us far too often; witnessed for certain in the early demise of a vast number of “romantic” relationships, especially when the pressures of life start to relieve the lighter, most welcome, earlier moments.

But this is not to say that the romantic phase of our relationships is wrong. Heaven forbid! As our relationships mature we learn and grow together so much more, and that romance still took place and is re-discovered in an instant.

This necessitates our building of an oral tradition—much as the ancients did preceding printed materials. Our oral tradition, as we recall and reminisce, is the binding of us as we see each other in mix of one-being; one flesh!

With all due respect to our Diggers, the tradition of remembrance is so pertinent also to our relationships. Lest we forget: the romance. It’s integral to our collective identity.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Why Do We Hurt Most Those Closest to Us?

PICTURE TWO CONCENTRIC CIRCLES. They describe respect in our relationships. One fits perfectly within the other. Now think of the area inside the inner circle as representing our ‘politically correct’ “best” behaviour we share with others we don’t know that well. Beyond this, into the area in the annulus i.e. between inner and outer circles, is the zone we go with our family and closest friends—it’s the danger zone relationally.

We often go beyond the respectful inner circle with our families, into the ‘hurt zone,’ simply because we know we can do it and often get away with it. With others we’d be flatly rejected so we don’t go there.

But, the boundaries within the inner circle—where we’re polite basically all the time—impede us. None of us can be pretentious for too long; we all despise such dishonesty. So we can’t wait to get home and ‘be real’ with our family, friends etc.

Now, the relational issues begin when the lines blur. The boundaries beyond the inner circle realistically are not the best to venture into; sharp disrespect just because someone loves us is clearly not on. It’s an abuse of the love in the relationship.

It’s important to realise that whilst we have this arrangement with our closest ones we still need to respect them. And why should we not respect them more than we respect total strangers? Sadly, it’s not as simple as that, is it?

So, we also need to make plenty of room for forgiveness; that is, forgiveness for others close to us who transgress the inner circle boundaries with us, and forgiveness for ourselves when we transgress—for both these events are bound to occur.

We hurt those closest to us most because they are not only our refuge, in a very tangible sort of way, but they also tend to press our emotional buttons too. These together, force conflict, unfortunately. Our loved ones have quirks which we at times find funny, yet at other times these things drive us mad!

Some practical measures to consider:

è Make a covenant to respect all people at all times. This doesn’t mean when we disrespect people we’re going to condemn ourselves; we need to forgive and move on.

è We also promise ourselves we’ll promptly apologise to those we offend through disrespect. Through Spiritual awareness and also autosuggestion, we train ourselves to be sort of hyperaware of times requiring apology.

è Talk about these issues with family—particularly the ones who you have transgressed. Simply acknowledging these issues is a great starting point.

è Try and extend the simplest and most heartfelt respect and kindnesses to your family. They’re the ones left when hangers-on are long gone. And forgiveness discounted, we can’t take back our harsh words. This should motivate us to not say them in the first place as much as we can.

The ‘inner circle’ of respect is a precious place to keep all our relationships. We can only get there and remain there when we put in the time, effort and focus.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

I Wonder What He (or She) Meant by That

EVER SAID THIS IN YOUR MIND? Of course you have. Everyone has. An important study on negotiation by Harvard University found that whilst ninety percent of people have positive intent in their dealing with us, eighty percent of the time—if we ask the above question as a filter—we attribute their intent negatively. Yes, that’s right, where people are motivated positively for the most part we see their motives negatively. Go figure! This is a powerful fact explaining why a great many communication conflicts emerge in the first place, especially when they shouldn’t.

So, what do we do with that?

We somehow need to bring cognisance of this issue to our conscious awareness so we can relegate that thinking, trusting the person in our midst—for any distrust can only harm the rapport.

Think about it. We risk when we trust people—we risk our emotions, our information, our results. But that’s all. When we’ve been disappointed in someone’s negligence of our trust we need to steel ourselves to remain ‘in faith.’ This is because that good healthy portion of the rest of the population we’re dealing with—the ninety percent—actually mean well. Even the person who’s disappointed us probably didn’t mean to.

Why should the deserving miss out when it’s only the minority who disappoint us anyway?

Additionally, we can see now how little some might trust us and how important then it is for us to trust first, as a basis of returned trust—the preparedness to make the first move. We almost need to foresee that people will gravitate toward a negative attribution of what we’re planning, saying or doing. Problem solve. Step out of the way. Trust them first.

All in all we need to be a little gentler with others and consciously avoid digging into the nebulous abyss of our own (often dead wrong) perceptions. In this, we save ourselves the time and wasted effort of relational stress and concern that’s often not even warranted.

People are people; no better or worse than ourselves. They don’t think about us in negative ways all the time as some of the more paranoid might imagine. It’s just not like that. The moment we jettison our egocentric views is the moment a genuine hope for relational freedom is realised, and a vision for the zenith of living life is captured!

Trust; simply trust. Even if you’ve been hurt, (with few exceptions) learn to trust again.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Love – Almighty and Glorious Symbol of Eternity

“Love is a symbol of eternity. It wipes out all sense of time, destroying all memory of a beginning and all fear of an end.”

~Author Unknown.

Love is the purest form of life. It gives when it has a choice not to, speaking voluminously; it gives unconditionally, passionately, faithfully, unswervingly—she’s to die for!

Love operates on its own schedule and makes its own rules—rules which operate in realms far beyond law. Love is the holy, higher law. Our law is human-made. Love is divinely conceived. Never the twain shall meet. And yet, can we conceive... our law is based upon love, viz. Duty of Care. All law, it seems, is. Law mimics love; it chases her.

Whenever we’ve been inspired we’ve been touched by love; when challenged though respected—this too is love. Love is virtue held to the test, faithfully bestowed. Love, then, is teamwork and victory against the odds, our purposes achieved.

True love is not contrived simply in some mushily fashioned affection. This form of love in high romantic season is a temporary-at-best sort of infatuation that cannot ever be sustained between two same people—not continually. People forever looking for this vain, excitable shimmer of love are usually crestfallenly disappointed by the veneer of “love” as it wears off and the tougher exterior of things finally takes shape and bears itself over ‘the relationship.’ Such truth is awesome; certainly the making of any true Valentine’s Day intended relationship.

Love is eternal—everything about it holds sway. It partners with such chief virtue as truth and wisdom and grace—fused together, only God could touch.

Love transcends all relevancies of time. Time is so inconsequential in its realm. It is breathless and hardly able to warrant a protest or challenge. It cannot command the legion of angels like Love can.

Love can be tough. It can take us places we do not want to go; places and situations that are shrieking and murderously difficult. In the character of care we cannot give up. We stand boldly and courageously knowing full well we must contend despite the losses, hurts, embarrassments, tumults and other depths. Is this not love?

It is that thing we experience when we’re touched, saddened, inspired and otherwise blown away by News, movies, great sporting feats and comebacks. When we learn of conjoined twins miraculously separated or of Haitians rescued weeks after they were long considered dead, we know love’s touch and we’re confounded, yet inspired. Even a September 11 catastrophe moves us most in love; the rounded depth of emotion brought to bear on the hearts of many millions. In this we know love has conquered the mightiest evil. It’s an unstoppable force. Love—the most profound sacrifice.

Love cannot be adequately described or categorised; we just stand in awe of her. We know she is the very meaning of life—and to confuse and pigeonhole her with romance is to completely undermine what she is all about. And yet, she forgives, always. And this is why she is so persuasively and welcomingly powerful.

Love. Now. Forever.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

‘No Offense’... ‘Don’t Worry, None Taken!’

“We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.”

~Abraham Lincoln.

‘No offense,’ said Jaden, completing his rebuttal, to which Sam said bluntly in return, ‘None taken.’ We all know there’s ordinarily more to this than meets the eye; even both these guys know deeper down it’s not all beer and skittles after this little dispute.

The trouble with little disputes and many of them is they wear down our resolve; our ‘hurt museums’ grow and swell, threatening to break out at the least desired moment. Our stores of emotional baggage cram the closet and there’s suddenly little room to move.

If there’s anything we’ve grown too accustomed to in life it’s dishing out offenses and not taking them well. Both must be reduced if we’re to come close to reaching our relational goals.

If only we realised that most of the time people aren’t even thinking that much about us in any event, we’d carry less of our own hurts as they buzz incessantly through and over our minds.

The 16^th U.S. President nails probably the golden rule (phrased somewhat differently than the actual “Golden Rule”) of all intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships. If only we had the courage to absorb all our hurts and the prudence and care not to issue them.

Surely we can only get this somewhere near right when we’re thinking of other people more than ourselves—or at least if we’re only thinking of ourselves in the context of others and our initiatives and reactions with them.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Real Social Affluence

LEGO blocks (which are “Registered,” by the way) are synonymous to the potential and construction of all our relationships. This is where life is not a numbers game. We can bear only a ‘few blocks’ before our social needs avalanche. Yet, we can be so apt at “counting” our popularity—so afraid we are of missing out, can’t we be?

And yet again, we have people who’re so perfectly comfortable “owning” only one Lego block; relationally monogamous and introverted, all their focus goes into a personal interest and this one person. Quaint and novel? All too rare in this day.

Real social affluence—as opposed to the concept of financial affluence—seems defined by the depth and meaning in our closest relationships i.e. the fewer the better.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Vows of Love; Commitment True

On our Wedding day I declared my vows;

I promised each day to be the caring spouse;

To love you the very best I can;

Through the years—our collective span.

My intent whilst pure, honourable and condition-free;

And to serve and to trust and to cherish thee;

Is certain to fail from time to time;

Yet I know your forgiveness, patience and love are mine.

Likewise I stand by you always as one;

Knowing I must trust you until our days are done;

Ready to commit my selfish pride to die;

Respect and honour mutual they lie.

During the collection of the seasons of our lives together;

We will stand shoulder to shoulder, facing the world forever;

Through all the cherished and tragic memories we’ll gather;

With you to the end that’s all that matters.

And then as we look back;

The journey that was—a splendiferous track!

Sitting together on that park bench;

Strolling as if by heaven’s glorious fence.

Arm in arm, stride for stride;

Adoring each other, a joyful glide;

Our legacy, the pride, the groove;

Our family, what a team we’ll prove!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

This poem’s about a journey and a destination—of love. It describes the flow and the give and take of love—the oft sacrifice; the triumphs, tragedies, joys and sorrows.

And as we give to each other and take part in life together, a life joined spiritually at the hip, we learn over and again it seems, the basic lesson of life; the purpose of it is beyond us, individually, and our meagre personal understanding. We sit quietly together, smile humbly and simply marvel.

Life with a partner right throughout is the way to ‘do life’ if it can be managed.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

The Forgiveness Plan: obj: Ditch Abounding Conflict

WORLD’S of conflict emerge wherever people co-relate. So called “professionals” deal in conflict, revelling in it, however absurd. Organisationally, it’s a dreaded but certain blight that, as part of the human condition, everyone must accept as fact, and even plan for, and around. There is something very obvious missing in every organisation’s approach to people management. This thing is forgiveness.

Without “super-spiritualising” anyone, I can demonstrate this is so pertinent to everyone, it just sits up and begs our collective attention. As basic human beings we’re living, breathing, thinking, feeling, walking, talking basket cases—and our potential is limited severely by this. Ask just about any manager at a workplace whether they oftentimes feel like the headmaster of a kindergarten and they’ll laugh with you at the irony; the sort of laughter that indicates you’re close to the mark.

Truth accepted, we’re five milliseconds away from behaving like little children—the ‘blue-eyed, brown-eyed’ experiment revealed this saliently in the 1960s. Now if we accept this truth we can finally put strategies in place to deal with upset people—we can in a manner, “heal” them, making them happier, freer and more productive as a result.

This sounds simple though it’s an often much vaunted and complicated process.

Strategies depend on forgiveness; teaching the theory, having the theory accepted, and then teaching the skills of communication, compassion and empathy relating to actual forgiveness, including self-forgiveness—for how can we forgive others if we don’t readily forgive ourselves.

But most of all, strategies depend fundamentally on getting people one-on-one and encouraging the exhibition of courage and trust of honest communications in dredging up long-cherished hurts and resentments, in a productive manner, toward mutual cognisance, acknowledgement, restitution and eventually, healing. (Long sentence, maybe... long process too; but entirely worthwhile for anyone engaging in it.)

This is no spiritual, warm ‘n’ fuzzy. It’s the reality of work and the nature of all people when it comes to the inevitable conflicts we all have, every day.

Forgiveness—when it’s adopted as an attitudinal skill—needs to be an ‘in the moment’ thing; it’s caring and responsible for the relationship—all relationships! And most of all it’s beyond organisational level, cutting through—dividing—through life itself, it’s central to our task of effective and free living.

In the final analysis, we need to get people onto an agenda of leaving past things in the past—those things that would hem them in, anchoring them, haranguing them—those things that severely limit their own and others’ potential and mental, emotional and spiritual freedom.

If we want more harmony, trust and respect and less conflict, envy, gossip and innuendo (and less stress, anxiety and tears!), we must attend systematically to this issue of healing hearts wounded.

The science of practical forgiveness; my goal is to tease out the convoluted threads.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

When the Dream is Destroyed – Then What?

“And still I dream he’d come to me;

That we would live the years together;

But there are dreams that cannot be;

And there are storms we cannot weather.”

~Susan Boyle, I Dreamed a Dream.

When our dreams are shattered... what then? The Boyle song is a song of truth for the vast many that travel life’s rusty way; something that promises so much, yet delivers so much routine disappointment. And the key idea of life is that our dreams will be crushed. This is for a good many reasons, not the least of which is our propensity to dream the unrealistic dream.

Life cannot deliver on these dreams, for we live not in the Garden of Eden.

So, what happens when we have dreamed—for instance, a lifelong romance with a soul-mate and the partnership has failed—what then? No contingency plan? Have we vested so much in life with them that without them we’re nothing? Certainly our identities are in for an overhaul. And here stands a golden opportunity...

Many of us have had our dreams shattered, and many will in the future. It’s what we do with these broken dreams—the “fresher” reality, if you like—that forges our future. From hopelessness, rage, hurt and resentment we need to find ways of seeing our purpose anew. The fresher reality is then to be accepted, truly, not in some platitudinous way, but real acceptance. But just how do we get there?

The ending of Susan Boyle’s song is poignant:

“My life has killed the dream I dreamed.”

Dark words? No, I don’t believe so. I don’t know the intent of those words, but one thing I do know is this: the perceived end is merely a framework for the most real re-beginning—a life where truth beckons and so too the opportunity to align, finally, with ‘life’s agenda.’

The best thing about the reality of your dreams-in-ruins is they were to some extent fictitious from the beginning, anyway; you know the truth now; now you have the experience of reality with which to dream up something more real; something more pressing; something fervently unique and meaningful, personally. Living on the ‘other side’ of the fantasy can give cleaner, more understandable meaning.

It’s so life-giving to know we’re not to come close to achieving our dreams—for our dreams are false, romantic and misleading. The entire press media propagate that dreams can be realised and we all love reading and hearing about dreams coming true. But they’re overdramatised and hardly realistic as a model for common living.

When our lives have finally killed our dreams we can then wake up at last and begin viewing life on life’s terms—only then will we begin to glimpse our real, realisable dreams; our very purpose.

And this is simply to understand and live in a present where we are but one very small (but incredibly significant) part of the universe. Understanding this is a huge relief!

Dreams are made to be broken. Look around you. Life is about finding the purpose beyond the dream. Beyond the dream life is real and it will treat you fairer than ever before.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.

Not Buying Into It

THERE’S no shortage of opinion within this cosmos we call humanity, is there? And before we know it we’re roped into delivering our “opinion,” hatched in a split-second, pitted for or against some poor innocent often-times. Funny, do we care? It’s assumed we do. No one asks half the time.

In an often disparate and postmodern world we can, however, be oh so easily trapped in proffering our opinion. For the many who think it’s their God-given right, we really do have cause to think again.

We know it backfires, so why do we do it?

Instead...

Beckon a little common sense and season it with a spiritual calm. Whack it in the oven to cure and out comes a baked sense of fundamental peace ready to go the journey—at least until we’re out of that situation.

It’s a treasure to see the uncommitted look and language of the body, as issues bound our way are deflected back upon their perpetrator.

Gossip is never becoming. Staying square in the middle—not taking a side—that’s our best position. As neither part of the problem or solution we sidestep that curve ball, the hospital handpass. Even within the “safe” confines of our homes it’s not safe to gossip; not that the walls have ears or anything, it’s the habit that most concerns us.

And it’s only when we’ve let those words escape that we often realise (a micro-second too late) we’ve transgressed the absent—if we’re even aware.

Not buying into things that are really no concern of us is a wisdom activity based in the truth that what goes around comes right back around at us, eventually. Of course, we can’t see this at the time, but our instincts and conscience know. This law of truth will be the death of us (relationally) if we push it too far.

The principle of reversal says to us that what we sow we shall reap; it’s seriously funny how consistently this works. Whether we’re genuinely interested in other people and what they think of us or not, there’s very little more to be compelled by than saving our own hide. That’s the most basic of motives, surely.

As with all our activities of building and exercising virtue, we must apply the two golden strategies:

It’s about 1) awareness and 2) courageous, morally-responsible action. Become aware of the trickery of buying into fallacy and then we have the opportunity to vest courage in acting by not taking part.

Buyer beware. Don’t buy in the first place. It’s a rip-off.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.