relationship

Today’s Poem: Happiest by George Sterling

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Happiest

George Sterling

Calling you now, not for your flesh I call,
   Nor for the mad, long raptures of the night
   And passion in its beauty and its might,
When the ecstatic bodies rise and fall.
I cannot feign:  God knows I see it all—
   The flaming senses, raving with delight,
   The leopards, swift and terrible and white,
Within the loins that shudder as they crawl.

All that could I exultingly forego,
   Could I but stand, one flash of time, and see
Your heavenly, entrancing face, and know
   I stood most blest of all beneath the sun,
   Hearing these words from your fond lips to me:
       “I love, love you, and love no other one!”

Source

Today’s Thought: Love is an Act of Free Will

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One of the freest acts we make is to love. No one can force us to love another. We can be forced to help another, but we can’t be forced to love him/her. An act of love is an act of a free will. An act of love is more than the speaking of the words, “I love you.” It is the offering of one’s being to another and placing the other in a primary position without seeking anything in return. Similarly, we can’t make anyone love us. We may be loving toward another, that doesn’t mean the love we express will be returned. We may think, “I wish he/she would love me like I love him/her.” It doesn’t work that way. When we love another, it is not a quid pro quo transaction. We love because we love. There is no expectation of return. When we love and it is returned in full, we are fortunate because we’ve found ourselves in a relationship where boundaries are blurred and two hearts became one.

Today’s Thought:

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Imagine you’re a detective. You’re at a crime scene. You remember all your TV crime shows so you’re all set. There are three witness to the crime. You decide to question them separately since you don’t want them colluding on what they should tells you. One thing you won’t do is to ask them how they’re doing and then walk away. You’ll have a whole list of questions to ask. Some of the witnesses answers will lead to questions you haven’t thought about.

When we want a good relationship with someone it’s important to show interest in them. We politely probe to discover more information about their likes and dislikes. It’s as if we are detectives and we are attempting to draw information from the person we’re with. We forget about ourselves and focus totally on the other person

Thinking Out Loud: There’s Something Good in Your Relationship

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Learning to Appreciate. A look at appreciative inquiry. Excerpts are taken from, Appreciative Inquiry Handbook (2003) by David Cooperrider, Diana Whitney, and Jacqueline Stravros.

Appreciative inquiry is driven by two basic questions:

1.  What in this particular setting and context gives life to this system (think of a system such as your family, work group, team, anyplace where a group of people gather in a common purpose)  when it is most alive, healthy, and symbolically related to its various communities?

2. What are the possibilities expressed and latent that provide opportunities for more effective forms of organizing. 4

Note: think about your current family setting or relationship setting and let’s put appreciative inquiry to work. Imagine you and your partner or significant other go out to Starbucks to have a coffee and conversation about your relationship. You sit down and talk about your relationship. Instead of talking about what’s wrong with your relationship you change the direction of the conversation. Together you brainstorm what gives life to your relationship when it is most alive, healthy, and expresses the kind of values the both of you share. To discover the moments in your relationship that are most alive and healthy think of specific experiences you shared where your relationship was most alive and healthy. What was it about these experiences that made it special? You’ll quickly discover that you have a history of experiences where you experienced joy, overcoming challenges, and supporting each other.

Photo for Today – Two Hearts – One Love

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Today’s Photo ~ The Dance

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Every great relationship is a dance between two people in love where observers can’t separate the dance from the dancers.

Today’s Inspiration ~ Kindness Matters

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“If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.”

~ John Steinbeck

Something to Think About

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Some days I think about my dad. He was tough and I had to walk a straight line. Most times it was only the look and I knew I was about to cross a line from which there was no return (LOL). I remember the thousands of times he tossed a football to me. I remember being taught how to hit a curve ball. I remember going into the swamps to pick blueberries (I always ate more than I picked). I remember going into the woods in the fall to search for mushrooms. He only got to the 8th grade when his dad died. He quit school to go to work to help support the family. He wasn’t perfect, but what he gave me far outweighed any father-son hangups I may have collected. Here’s to you, dad! Cheers!

A Better Life ~ Kindness Works

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Kindness is the glue that holds a relationship together. When we are kind to each other, we express our love in numerous ways. We stop thinking about ourself and use our time thinking about the other. The relational energy created by two people who think more of each other than the self, expands exponentially and builds a lasting, forever kind of relationship.

Today’s Reflection ~ Truth & Love

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Truth is not spoken in anger. Truth is spoken, if it ever comes to be spoken, in love. The gaze of love is not deluded. It sees what is best in the beloved even when what is best in the beloved finds it hard to emerge into the light. ~ J. Coetzee

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