Is There Love Enough for Me?

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Remember how you experienced this day in childhood? My own childhood was, perhaps, longer ago that some of yours, so my experience may be different from yours. In my middle class elementary school, each child decorated a shoe box with tissue and construction paper hearts in red, pink, lavender and white, adding touches of lace-like paper doilies, if we were lucky enough to have some.Through a slot in the box's lid, our classmates dropped small white envelopes containing their offerings of love and friendship. Inside each envelope, an image of a cowboy, princess, space ranger or ballerina asked, "Will you be my valentine?"

Back then, teachers did not require that every child give a valentine to every other child, as I believe most do today. Perhaps adults in the late 1950s and early 60s were not so concerned that a child's self-esteem is fragile and must be protected from all negative experience. What I remember is that there was always a moment of noticing that some child in my class had not given me a valentine. There was that momentary heartache of thinking, "S/he doesn't like me."

Moments like this were just one source of confirmation of a "Truth" I thought I knew: there is not enough love for me to have my share. What was your childhood belief about love and its availability to you? What is your belief today? Is there love enough for you?

The Childhood Treasure of Independence calls to me on this day after Valentine's Day, to share what it knows of love's availability. I've decided to give Independence its voice today and hope you enjoy this interview....

What Babies Know

This week, I was blessed by the opportunity to hold a young infant. I always love that first sensation of fragility, as a parent or grandparent transfers into my arms that precious little miracle who has only recently entered the world. How do they let go?

Then the tiny sensory bundle that is a baby is there; back curving along the inside of my arm, bobbing head cradled in my palm. The complex scent that is a newborn creates a little bubble around the two of us. I am swept into the voice of this new child, learning about him or her as I smell freshly washed skin and hair, or a diaper that needs changing, or stale cigarette smoke. I feel the way he moves in my arms and I hear they way she "speaks," making long vowel sounds or strings of little "eh-eh-eh-eh" sounds. At the same time, my eyes take in hair and skin, movement, and facial expressions, and I learn more about this babe.

This is how babies experience us: pure sensory input (but without all the language to describe it as I have). For a newborn, each of us adults is nothing but a single sensory image. Everything about us that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or felt with the skin/body, streams into the infant like threads onto a hi-speed loom. In the shortest space of time imaginable -- SNAP! -- like that, but a million times faster -- those individual sensory threads are braided together into a whole. You, the adult holding the baby, are a sensory experience for Baby but you don't yet have a name.

This way of apprehending reality is the rich vein of ore from which this little being can mine the Childhood Treasure of Trust, if we adults know how to help.

Creating the Art of the Possible

January is almost over and this is my first post this month. Like many of you, I have been struggling with physical dis-ease. My body has been painfully congested, infected with bacteria.... As I fought for health, I often pushed my body for more hours of wakeful activity than it wanted to give. In a month of busy schedule and frequent travel, my desire to heal my physical self was at odds with my calendar and my desire to do my job with excellence.

I strove for balance between these two realities; I used many tools, some from the world of science and some from the world of Spirit. I neither "gave in" to the illusion that physical symptoms are all that I am, nor ignored the reality of those symptoms' persistence. Some days I was more successful in that balance than others; others days I was the lone guest at a truly boring pity party.



You may be wondering: What does this tale have to do with the 7 Childhood Treasures? I didn't make the connection myself until yesterday, as I sat in an airport waiting area, coughing like a tubercular patient from the early 1900s, watching a four-year-old boy practice his capacity for Negotiation with his father.

Learning to negotiate is a developmental imperative at four years of age but Negotiation's manifestations look nothing like the refined art exhibited in the adult world by skilled diplomats and business leaders. In fact, in tends to look at lot like this kid on the right.

Paying Attention: A Good Investment

Years ago, I wrote, "As much as I love you and as important as your love is to me, I hate you for the central tragedy of our relationship:  that you don't know me at all." This statement was contained within a letter I wrote to my mother but never delivered. When I wrote it, I was feeling the despair of the little girl I once was, who needed her mother to truly see her, to realize the pain she was bearing alone.

There I was, in my 30s, still wanting the mother who could see that her daughter's heart and soul were sick, shriveling, dying. When I was a young child, I was lost, afraid, and overwhelmed by a nightmare life full of dark secrets...and I felt motherless. Facing those childhood secrets as an adult, I was feeling motherless all over again, still yearning for the nurturing, protection, and healing I had longed for as a child. I wanted a mother who cared more about my emotional life than about my career success or how my clothes looked.

Here I am now, decades later, knowing this truth:  I can never go back to get the mothering I needed as a child, but I can get it now. It's never too late to mother ourselves; we have only to begin.

The Whole Secret

"I always enjoy reading your updates," she said. "You're always so positive! How do you do that? How do you stay so positive all the time?" My answer, that my life/spiritual philosophy includes the reality that whatever I put out is what I receive back, was the easy answer in the moment, yet not enough. "Oh, I agree with that," she continued, "but sometimes I just get so angry!"

You slipped away, my friend, before I could respond. The rest of my "secret" of staying positive is that I simply don't care what others do.That sounds callous at first, I know. But let me explain more.

I didn't say I don't care about others. I do! I care deeply about others. I simply "don't care" about their behavior. That is, I don't have expectations for what others should or shouldn't do. I don't have any attachment to their choices. Therefore, I don't have any emotional reactions to those choices. I can't get angry at you if I live in the simple truth that your choices are your own and have nothing to do with me.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you'll remember that I recently wrote about this Childhood Treasure of Independence as the Buddhism of early childhood.

If only I could trust you....

Got Trust?

Not as obvious as a white stripe across your upper lip, there are still visible signs of your answer. In your furrowed brow, your hunched shoulders, your crossed arms or hesitant voice, I can see that your infant self did not get what s/he needed to mine the Childhood Treasure of Trust. In your open smile, freedom of movement, and easy laughter with strangers, I can also see when your treasure chest overflows with this gemstone.

Those of you with the furrowed brow, hunched shoulders, crossed arms and hesitant voice all believe that you are justified in your stance. You've learned from experience, haven't you? The world is not a place for trust. People have let you down, betrayed you, left you twisting in the wind. Maybe a few have earned your trust...and they had to work darn hard at it, because you're not an easy sell, are you? And even a few of them -- maybe most of them -- in the end, lost your trust. As one non-truster I know put it, "It takes a long time to earn my trust and it can be lost in a moment, by a single action."

Hogwash, I say!

The End of the World

What if it really was the end of the world? That planet-obliterating meteor is hurtling toward us and we have three weeks to live, then just one. How would you spend your time? Trying all the altered states you’ve never let yourself try before? Rioting and looting? Desperately trying to reconnect to family or some long-lost love? Frantically, anxiously trying to prevent the inevitable? Mowing the lawn?

I like to think that I’d choose to be with someone with whom I can make an authentic connection, just doing every-day stuff: cooking a meal, listening to music, hanging at the beach. I like to think that I’d choose to be with someone with whom I could be 110% in the moment, just present and aware of myself and that other person, without stress or worry. Someone to whom I could say, in the last 60 seconds of our lives, “Tell me about your childhood,” listening with complete attention to the answer. 

That kind of peace may be the final result of Acceptance, my greatest challenge among the 7 Childhood Treasures. Acceptance: the Buddhism of early childhood.