Tiffany knows what I love

I guess I’m guilty: I’m in love with love.

Love hearts are my favourite symbol- I have them all around me- I love finding hearts in nature (leaves, rocks, markings from the exiting tide on the sand) and I love the word love. I even have a biz with a friend where there’s a love heart in our logo and our website is lovecwc.

Most of my favourite songs are about falling in love, being in love, unrequited love or even lost love.

Movies that hit my heart the hardest are the ones where a love is harmed.

Lately I’ve been finding the world is harder than it used to be. Mostly because I feel like there is a loss of love. Maybe not everyone is as in love with love as me. I see people being mean to each other about things that don’t really matter in the big scheme of things. I notice a shortness in some of the interactions that people have with each other based on whether someone is wearing a mask, getting a stab or standing far enough away. I don’t like it when our hearts harden, or when we choose to see the differences between us rather than the things that bind us together.

When we offer up our heart to another person we are at our most vulnerable and our most trusting. With each quivering beat we are at the mercy of another- it is our most thrilling, exciting and terrifying time. It is also our most powerful. For if we can offer up the essence of our deepest selves for scrutiny and sanctuary we can do anything. We are free.

Hearts are sensitive and soft and need to be held gently. They are also strong and courageous and true.

We have to keep our hearts well, to listen to them and respond to their wants, lest they stiffen or become sharp. The vicious edges of a heart that has been neglected can cut as clean as a shard of glass drawn along the length of a finger, throbbing to death as the life and love pulses out of it.

One day a long time ago my boy and I were talking about war. It was ANZAC Day and I was trying to explain to him why the emotion of the day always overwhelms me. Why my usually stoic lacrimal glands seep with tears for people I’ve never known in places I’ve never been. Why the Last Post causes my arm hairs to stand up like so many soldiers. He couldn’t understand it, my gentle boy, and I watched his brain tick over the thoughts one by one, trying to make sense where there is none. Finally he looked at me and said, “No one would ever go to war if everybody just remembered that everybody else has a mummy. The mummies love them. And the mummies will be really, really sad.”

My boy was right.

These days when I get dressed in the morning, my finishing touch and my fortress is my necklace. It was bought for me by my family and it whispers my favourite word, from my favourite shop. I look in the mirror as I put it on, and say quietly, “I’m just adding a little bit more love.” And then I breathe out, and think of ways that I can make my necklace come true.

I think it’s okay to be in love with love.

..From The Ashers..