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Tag Archive for: living on life’s terms

acceptance, connection, love, protecting love

Life’s Terms

My family is hopeful about a new beginning . We spent some time, at dinner, planning what we could plan and agreeing to surf the waves of this beginning as they occur. Smiling, fingers crossed, brows furrowed, hopeful.

A short time later, I walked through the Botanic Gardens, wet and steamy after rain showers. Sounds of Santana, playing at Ravinia just a few blocks away, wafted over the eastern gardens and tempted me to jive walk over the bridge and toward the water garden.

As I moved toward the greenhouses to see Spike, the Titan Arum, the mood of the garden was somber as if in mourning. We had all been waiting for weeks to smell Spike’s aroma as Spike’s spathe opened to invite pollinators. Word had just gone out a couple of hours before that Spike wouldn’t be “blooming,” and therefore aromatic, as expected. Disappointment was as palpable as Spike’s aroma had been purported to be. I walked through, curious and intent on attending to Spike as I had for weeks [Geek status revealed: sometimes twice a day], regardless of performance.

Moments later I walked past a wedding celebration: boisterous, effervescent, joyful! Glasses clinking, guests smiling and laughing; bride and groom captured in surprised joy that they were held closely by so many.

And on to the prairie, walking through long grass that whispered “shh, shh, shh” in response to cicadas and mosquitos. Soft contemplation as I walked alone attending to the vibrant life around me. Life that was not advertised and did not have an audience. Life that simply lived: busy, quiet, successful, strident, waning, passionate nonetheless.

A night full of examples of life’s terms. Predictably unpredictable. Life happening in so many ways for so many people all at the same time. Some Santana fans wet but unstoppable in their desire to hear the music while the artists were close at hand. [Others stayed home, unable to be there in the rain.] Garden Staff and visitors adapting to news that Spike would do what Spike does, not what folks thought Spike would do. Bride and groom, family and friends, celebrating joy in one of the most beautiful spots in the world. And the prairie: passionate in its vibrance, overlooked in its constant presence. And our new beginning, not here yet but so vibrant and visible in its preparation.

Loving on life’s terms is simple: love while Life does what it does. Life’s terms can be vibrant, boisterous, disappointing, solitary, overwhelming, fabulous, unpredictable, breathtaking, crushing, quiet, full of jazz fusion, Pharrell Williams and John Legend. And Change waiting to happen…

September 8, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-09-08 15:57:032021-10-14 22:24:46Life’s Terms
acceptance, children, disconnection, friendship, love, Modeling, patterns, safe driving, Teaching, Uncategorized

Give a Nod.

I live in an area that is filled with Achievers and the families they are raising. This area buzzes with activity.  The atmosphere is saturated with this message: “We are busy people. We all need to get somewhere and we need it to happen with as little mess as possible.” Stress levels are high. Our children watch how we handle it. They learn.

Of late, I’ve noticed an up-tick in head shaking. You know the kind I mean: when you take too long at the stop sign, letting pedestrians pass in the cross walk, and the driver behind you honks with frustration and shakes their head in disgust.

Yesterday, a teen driver miscalculated his position on a small road in our area. I was in his way. As he drove over a stretch of lawn to force his way past me, he glared and shook his head at me [barely missing a mail box]. Monkey see, monkey do. This young driver has witnessed, as I have, the difficulty of managing delayed satisfaction, the head shake, the quick judgement of idiocy from others while making one’s way down the road.

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve given my fair share of exasperated head shakes meant to wake the other person up to their failure, as viewed by me, from my perspective. Lately, I’ve done it more often that I care to admit.

Today, I am visiting another area. This is dance competition season and I occasionally land in a coffee shop waiting to pick my daughter up from a performance. New to the area, I drove slower than usual while trying to find my way. I may even have accidentally cut someone off when the road narrowed to one lane before I was aware it was happening. Not one head shake. Not one. When I waved to let the other driver know I knew of my mistake and was taking responsibility, she smiled, nodded her head and drove on.

A head nod. All was well. This gentle, accepting behavior has continued through my morning at the coffee shop. It’s possible I’ve landed in a happy respectful hamlet of achievers who do not need to judge, demean or alert me to my failures. I may have landed in a hamlet of folk who have good impulse control and an ability to tolerate delayed gratification.

Either way, that head nod felt so gentle, so accepting, I found myself reviewing the power of this small action. Allowing for the other person’s humanity, assuming good intention, is loving on life’s terms. Sometimes the best way to show up for another is to simply choosing a nod over a shake.

August 17, 2015/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-08-17 17:05:212021-10-14 22:24:46Give a Nod.
connection, dating, disconnection, friendship, history, intimacy, love, lovers, patterns, protecting love, sex

Falling in Love: Easy. Staying in Love?

In the most recent post “To Fall in Love,” I wrote about a pathway to falling in love. It includes asking and answering 36 questions with a partner, sitting face to face, then finding a quiet spot and looking into each others eyes for 4 minutes.

Key ingredients: A willing partner, willingness to Listen, willingness to Share, a quiet environment, sitting face to face, authenticity.

When you try this, are you going to fall in love?  It is easy to fall in love.  Harder to Stay in love.  Falling in love, within this context, is actually the decision to open oneself to receive another person.  Opening oneself to show one’s authentic self to another person.  The questions are designed to offer deepening authenticity; designed to offer opportunities to receive a level of truthful communication from another.  These things create the platform on which love and connection can thrive.

We humans crave attainment of a state and hope to live there as if we have scaled a vertical cliff and reached the mesa at the top.  Stasis, however, is not a viable option.  To stay in love requires effort.  It requires us to continue to risk with our partner.  To continue to be willing to be seen clearly, to risk being disappointed, to risk living in intimacy.  This can be a terrifying state of affairs…at the very least, exhausting.

My willingness to continue to ask questions, your willingness to live with my answers when I give them has everything to do with connection and attunement, those experiences that deepen love.  We humans often move in and out of states of awareness with each other and in our day to day worlds.

Loving on Life’s Terms is avoiding tuning out, finding that balance between connection with an Other while living life as it needs to be lived today.

 

January 30, 2015/1 Comment/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-01-30 09:03:102021-10-14 22:25:02Falling in Love: Easy. Staying in Love?
connection, contraception, dating, friendship, love, lovers, sex, sexual history

Oh Won’t You Stay With Me?

In “Attraction versus Résumé,” I mentioned that Nature has primed us for procreation.  We respond accordingly.  Nature hasn’t figured out, yet, that we humans have set expectations that we will live with each other, often monogamously for a lifetime.  Nature expects us, has pre-programmed us, to have lifelong connection whether we live together or not.

Hooking up, friends with benefits, one night stands, athletic sex, anonymous sex, fun sex.  Nature didn’t get the memo that we humans have figured out how to move sex into the recreational, non-consequential realm.  The advent of the Pill in the mid 1960s freed women and couples from the probability of unplanned pregnancies. Contraception options abound and therefore sex as recreation is abundant.

Nature made sure sex would feel good and, most report, it does!  Except for that unattached lost feeling folks have after the sex is over.  Sam Smith [“Stay With Me”] sings plaintively about what it means to lose the connection with another person after sharing bodies.

We are made to connect with each other.  Sharing bodies: touching, tasting, teasing skin to skin.  All of it serves to join us.

Remember:

When you connect sexually with someone, you create a history with that person.  Each kiss, touch, embrace builds that history.  Whether you tell yourself, intellectually, that it doesn’t matter or not your body knows it does.  The body remembers.  The heart yearns.

If this were an advertisement for beer I would carefully follow ethical code and tell you to remember to drink responsibly.  Since this is a blog about Loving on Life’s Terms, I will tell you to remember to have recreational sex responsibly.  When you enjoy another’s body, you create history with them.  This creates connection.  Connection, in Nature’s world, is what sex is about.

January 11, 2015/1 Comment/by Melissa Perrin
/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg 0 0 Melissa Perrin /wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Melissa-Perrin-logo.svg Melissa Perrin2015-01-11 18:00:002021-10-14 22:25:02Oh Won’t You Stay With Me?

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