Love, it's still simple, it's the will part that's hard...

I wrote this way back and it still is valid but it gets easier with age...........

"Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it."  Song Of Solomon 8:7.
But man can. Call me cynical,
I don't think that Love is instinctive; it's not some sentiment embedded deep in one's nature that it persists despite all else. It is a product of our upbringing and our social environment.  It is a choice made that gets buried so deep and therefore it implies it can be 'un-done',  (like water erodes the soil to expose the roots) dug away gradually until it appears near the surface and then our mind [and all it remembers] decides to love or not to love. We nurture it again or not  with reasons for that choice.
Love implies absolute acceptance - simple yet difficult, is it do-able ?

These statements from my earlier post The Choice to Make, ring true  - by M S Peck who said “The desire to love is not itself love….Love is an act of will …. Namely an intention and action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. No matter how much we may think we are loving, if we are in fact not loving, it is because we have chosen not to love and therefore not love despite our good intentions. On the other hand, whenever we do actually exert ourselves in the cause of spiritual growth, it is because we have chosen to do so. The choice to love has been made.”

If we choose it all the time and make it so, then there will be more ...as is implied by Mother Theresa who said  "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love."   On the other hand this seems simple.

(Nov/2009)

........stray thoughts

I grew up not feeling loved and so I looked for it.. 
and still I didn't have it when I thought I had found it.
I am loved, I know that in my head 
but the feeling ...
does not extend all the way to my bones, 
Do you know what I mean. 
I am not alone but 
I am still looking for love.

Labour and love.

remembering...

Labour and love.: Steadily it continues to tick, changing seasons... mothers persevere, even as time moves, but still we lag. We slow our steps to give...

(click on the title for the rest..)

Happy Mother's Day 

Time to do and think

It's the Chinese New Year holiday, and while I am not Chinese, I enjoy these holidays because it's the only time when it's a two days public holiday and this year it means a good long 4 day weekend.

I get one day to relax, the last day that is and the rest of it to spend with the kids and the family. At the back of my mind, I am consciously counting the days (7..) to the final court day.

I'm keeping myself busy, planning my son's birthday that's coming up next week and occupying myself and them with extra language exercises that they need. The boys unfortunately have a hard time getting into reading books of any kind. They've both got two years to prepare for major exams one for PSLE(to secondary) and one for the O levels. I'm trying out other methods to boost their vocabulary if  I can't force the reading. 

An interesting nugget from M Scott Peck's "Road Less Travelled'  -
Love is not simply giving; it is judicious giving and judicious withholding as well. I it judicious praising and judicious criticizing. It is judicious arguing, struggling, confronting, urging, pushing and pulling in addition to comforting..................requires thoughtful and often painful decisionmaking.

Waiting for Joy

It's been an exhausting few weeks, mentally more than anything.
I can't wait for everything to be over and to have my X out of my face. It will be soon,  looking forward to the joy of living.  The children are impatient too but I think they are handling it better than I am. In fact they play the 'game' quite well.  They seem almost stoic about  their father's behaviour, which is escalating in terms of the show of power and aggression. They do not want me confronting him. I have to wait it out.
He thinks he's winning, well he can have his illusion.

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My latest diversion is reading Eric Fromm, it's seriously tough text to follow but here and there there is light on particular subjects of interest. Here's something I want to remember particularly from his discussion....I keep trying to imagine how and what it would be/feel like in this ultimate situation of true Joy.

Eric Fromm writes about the difference between joy and pleasure and that what God wants for us is Joy as a virtue of living in the mode of being. Pleasure is transient, momentary and a product of possessions and the need to have.

Master Eckhart's thinking interprets it such.."When God laughs at the soul and the soul laughs back at God, the persons of the Trinity are begotten..
...when the Father laughs to the son and the son laughs back to the Father, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love and love gives the persons [of the Trinity] of which the Holy Spirit is one. .................
Joy, then, is what we experience in the process of growing nearer to the goal of becoming oneself"

A doggie to boost life.

.....  something happy to post about !
I got us a dog a few months ago. A spaniel, a cute little girlie looking(becos she looks like a she) dog of 4 years, with long floppy furry ears. They are supposed to be of a 'barkie' nature, but she seems to control herself.

At the onset of the drama, when we were officially divorced, I thought a dog would do several different things for us, the kids and me. We got her from the SPCA(the pound), unbelievable that someone could just give up a dog after 3 1/2 years.

A pet is a dependent and so the kids especially the boys feel a sense of responsibility and take to caring for her in their own ways. They relate differently to the dog as well.  They share certain responsibilities like taking her for her walks and ensuring she gets fed when big sister or mummy is not around.
She's drawn our hugs and attention and love just by being, and literally brought light into some of the shadow that we carry around with us.. 

For the youngest, he's her playmate as much as she is his. But doggie is a little wary of children I observed. But she is good-natured in the way she continues to let him annoy her, almost tolerant-like in the way her eyes follow him.
She's jealous and protective(from other-dog perspective) and super friendly with all humans. She's also a little beggar at the dining table, like we don't feed her enough.  Truly those big puppy dog eyes just melts your resolve.

With my middle kid, some of his maturity comes out, and his temperament is pretty much calmer around the little fella. 

The primary care giver is my oldest, she's just into animals, birds and even insects. She is her best pal, she's her silent companion. She sneaks in to sleep near her whenever she can.

Doggie's got the patience to just listen quietly and she looks at you paying real close attention. You know she'll keep your secrets. She's constantly butting against my legs, warm and sort of comforting really to just sit with her. And sometimes she can be like another mischievous kid when she gets into the mood to keep  yapping at the wind.

This little dog does wonders for us, does she know, I think she does cos she keeps begging for more treats.