As the sun dipped behind the tops of the pines to her west, the meadow felt the warmth of its powdery golden light, pollen and seeds floating in the glow of it. From her grasses the song of the crickets rose, floating across the whole of her, down to the lake and to the forest at her edge. So soothing was the song, that for a long, soft moment the meadow drifted into a dream about all the flowers and birds, the butterflies and spiders who had danced for her since spring. Soon the last of them would be gone. And with that thought, she woke from her reverie, glad to see asters swaying in the early evening light, because you never know, she reasoned, when a migrating hummingbird might stop by.
If you’ve been reading these Sunday Letters for a while, you may have heard this story before. I tell it from time to time because it’s a favorite of mine. And as we slide into the holiday season with all the high emotions it brings, it feels like a timely reminder. So here we go:
One day, while riding in the car, my teen-age son and I were listening to the radio. Some guy was explaining that we don’t always feel warm fuzzies toward someone we love. “We like each other because,” he said. (Because she made you laugh. Because he did the dishes. You can imagine any “because” you like.) “But,” the radio guy continued, “we love each other anyway.”
We love each other even when. That’s because love can embrace even those things in each other that drive us batty, or that conflict with our own cherished viewpoints or beliefs. Liking usually can’t go there; it stops at the differences.
My son and I loved the radio guy’s statement: We like each other because; we love each other anyway. It was so true that it made us laugh, and from that day on we often said to each other, as a kind of affectionate joke, “I love you anyway.”
I thought about that this past week when I ran into a difficult situation with a friend. She was recently diagnosed with a serious medical condition and when she asked me to pick up a certain snack item for her, I said I would feel uncomfortable doing that and asked if maybe she could make a different choice. Later, I gently suggested that she see a dietician for help in changing her eating habits so her body could stay as healthy as possible as long as possible.
She told me that she knew I was trying to help, but that it was up to her to choose what she wanted to eat and what she didn’t, and she didn’t want any more of my advice on the subject.
I thanked her for telling me that, and promised that I would respect her wishes. And I will – even though in my version of reality, the things that she’s eating are killing her.
What do you do when someone you love is, in your view, choosing to do things that may cost her life? Things that make you furious, that make you feel helpless, that, according to everything you know and believe, are potentially deadly mistakes Do you abandon your relationship because it’s too painful to see your friend’s choices? Because she’s refusing to accept what you (of course) believe to be superior information?
Nope. You love your friend anyway. You love her enough to honor her free will to make her own choices about her own life. That doesn’t mean you consent to enable clearly self-destructive behavior. You can draw lines and say what you are unwilling to do. Your free will counts, too.
You can work to find compromises. You can even do things for her that you strongly disagree with, as long as you’re clear that you’re helping only because you honor her right to make her own decisions and not because you‘re condoning them.
In essence, it all boils down to the Golden Rule – treating others the way you want to be treated.
Yeah, it gets difficult when you and the other hold strongly conflicting beliefs. You have to face the fact that each of you has plenty of evidence for what you believe, and that, in the end, beliefs are just that.
Whether it’s which foods to eat or not eat, or what political party to support, or what treatment to choose for a medical condition, or what God to believe in or reject – each of us must choose for ourselves. And each of us has the right to expect those who love us to accept our choices – whether they agree with them or not.
Because, in the end, it’s really true. We may like each other because, but we need to love each other anyway.
Wishing you a week where liking triumphs almost every minute.
A little love note from the universe made its way to me, despite the odds. It poked me and said, “So, kid, just what is it that you’re looking for?” I smiled, thinking all I was seeking was the usual. You know. I know you know. We’re all sifting through time’s sands for it. And how its nuggets shine!
This maple that stands at the edge of the cornfield at the big curve in the road, this one, newly aflame with the deep oranges she lifts to the sky each autumn, is an old friend. I’ve known her for decades now, walked beneath her branches, explored the old farmhouse she sheltered all its life. I remember the tire swing that hung from one of her limbs and imagine the laughter of children playing there on a day much like this one. Their family had a barn, too, and cows that grazed where the corn grows now. And right in the middle of the cornfield, there’s a tree with thick branches that folks call the hanging tree. This maple holds all these stories for me and more. I always look her way as I slow for the curve. She comforts me, and I imagine we’re radiating love to each other, feeling a connection somehow. I round the curve and the cornfield gives way to woods, and she is behind me now, marking the invisible point that tells me my journey’s ending. that I am almost home.
I couldn’t see the tops of the corn until I got to the rise of this hill. The stalks, suddenly gone from green to tan, are taller than my car now, almost ready for harvest. I get to drive this smooth, curving road every Wednesday, and I confess it’s a highlight of my week, year ’round. But today, the first day of sun after many days of rain, it thrills me. Just yesterday, it seems, I was a flea on the hide of a sleeping elephant as I drove between stubbly mounds of rutted, muddy gray. And now, look what this land has done! All those green shoots that rose from that elephant’s hide in spring have turned into corn! I feel rich, as I breathe in the late September air, a flea become a king.
As autumn rushes in, her flashy colors and cold in tow, she sets aside some places of refuge from the tumult, places of calm, where sun and shadows balance and peace resides.
Within each of us, such places dwell, little meadows of reverie and dream, where we can sit for a while and gather ourselves when the rush of the world overwhelms.
It’s good to map them out, to keep little postcards of them in our pockets, remembering their scents and seasons, and sounds, returning to them whenever the need arises for refuge, for calm. Settle there for a while. Feel the peace. Hear the whispers: You are welcome. You are cherished. You are loved.
The Great Yes always provides. Today it is berries for the birds’ journey south. Sometimes it is help when none seemed at hand. Or hope when all seems lost. Always a light dawns to quench the darkness. Openings appear. Faith rises in response to surrender. Answers flash into view. Don’t allow life’s maze to trick you to despair. The world is far more wondrous than we know. And forever there is this certainty: The Yes provides, and we are known and loved.
You can’t go from emerald to crimson overnight. No great work happens in the blink of an eye. First you need a vision: Let us paint these woods in autumn hues. Then you may begin. And once you have begun, you must keep on. A swath of red here, a bit of gold there, some orange, a touch of yellow. Keep on. Hour by hour, trusting, singing work’s joy, knowing your vision was born in the Yes and the Yes will unfailingly guide your hand.
Summer’s packed her bags now, said her farewells, lowered the lights, gathered her greens, ushered the last of the songbirds toward the southern horizon. Now, as she drifts away, Autumn tiptoes in, and smiling at all that Summer has done, kisses her forehead and scatters gold across the land to thank her and to bless her going.
I was paging through the local newspaper this morning and happened across the area’s high school football scores. I chuckled as I remembered the year our junior high school’s team got off to a dismal start. After losing their opening game 37-0, they went on to lose the next one by an even more crushing 67-0. Ouch. But eventually, they tasted victory and held their own for the rest of the season.
When you think about it, all the games we play—even the ones we call “life”—are a bit like experiments. And as Buckminster Fuller said, “There’s no such thing as a failed experiment, “only experiments with unexpected outcomes.”
Losing isn’t the same thing as failure. You form your strategies and put them into play the best you can. You bring all you know to the game; you call on all your experience.
But life is full of mysteries and variables, and the only way to learn more is to do the experiment, to play the game. Sometimes it all comes together just the way you had hoped. Sometimes it doesn’t. Accidents happen. We make mistakes. We get reminded that we’re mere human beings. But win or lose, we always come away knowing more than we did before we took the leap.
It’s the unpredictability of life that makes it interesting, after all – and fun.
You may think that you’d like to know what the remainder of the day holds, or what tomorrow or next week will bring. But if you did know, life would soon become one long and tedious déjà vu. Surprises keep us awake – and show us where we need to be paying more attention. They teach us. They give us new opportunities to use our strengths and talents and to develop them.
I hope when the coaches of losing football teams sit down with their players that they point out what the team did well and help them to do it even better. I hope they’ll help the kids discover how they can bring their strengths and talents to improve in the areas where they’re weak. And more than anything, I hope they tell their players that losing isn’t failure, and fill them with enthusiasm for learning more about playing the game, and loving it, win or lose.
I hope the next time you stumble, when something doesn’t work out the way you wanted, that you’ll remember it’s just one of life’s unexpected outcomes, meant to lead you onward, to make you better next time, and to unveil a few more of its mysteries for you.
