Next. Life. Watching. Through. Love. Start. Until.
There are times that it's easy for me to watch through love: when the Fall leaves glow like stained glass through my windows, so golden and orange in the soft Eastern sunlight, that my house is lit and warm because of it. When my husband looks at me--really looks at me--and smiles, and I feel his love for me down to my pinkie toes, and my heart is full. When things are going right and easy. When money isn't tight. When my loved ones are healthy and close.
But there are other times that I don't watch through love at all (and I will admit, I will never be Zen enough to look at certain people with love, just for their innate humanness--maybe that's for another lifetime...or six down the road. Maybe.). There's no watching through love going on when, despite the best planning and scheduling, the cat throws up and the dog needs out RIGHT NOW but first does her perfect-spot walk through of the yard, and I'm already late because my straightener tweaked my hair (and I blew 20 minutes I didn't have obsessed with fixing it--to no avail--only to give up worse than when I started), and I head downstairs where I pause to look at the outfit that my daughter chose, and I see flashbacks of Punky Brewster and imagine suspicions of other parents thinking neglect that make me have to go through the harangue of fussing with her to start again, and we finally get in the car and it's on "E." :::deep breath::: Nope. No warm glow of loving the moment there.
Or times when my back hurts, and I'd rather curl up and read or clean a toilet than make another night's dinner and hear how gross my daughter thinks it is. Or when the walls of my home are closing in on me from the piles of stuff that my daughter and husband accrue and deposit for later. I'm not going Stepford, but I wonder how my attitude would change, at least a little, if I consciously watched through love. Time is arbitrary, and unless someone is dying, there's actually more than enough of it...at least my daughter comes downstairs clothed, even on her most questionable fashion days--I'm not raising a kid who wants to push the nudity envelope yet--she's just...creative (and what am I always telling her? Better to be "weird" than boring--I guess she listens!). Dinner--it's for my people, to bring them close, keep them healthy. And I have food to give them--I am lucky. The piles of stuff? That's a tough one for me, but (again) it proves they're close by.
All the things outside of my home that annoy me? Maybe I can slow down enough to be amazed at the little, elderly man shuffle-pushing the grocery cart down the middle of the aisle in front of me--it takes a certain something to do that, after all, and he's earned the right to slow down to the pace that suits him (I love old people, and I am awed when I picture their child-selves next to them, knowing that they've remembered the wonder that they had back then..."watching through love," perhaps?). The people I'd rather not have in my life, who come into it due to circumstances...well, those circumstances aren't permanent, and I have the people who mean something--who I would choose--close by, and they strengthen me. The days that seem like my head will explode if one more thing is added--I suppose it's comforting to know that those days aren't every day, and for one reason or another, something in the Universe has decided that I have the brains and the skill to make it through them (and the ability to say "no")...and the world won't pop off its hinges if I don't finish everything. Maybe watching through love also means loving myself enough to go gently on myself when I need to--I don't do that well.
Of course, the whole thing translates into bigger, world-type things, but, personally, I need to start small in this lifetime, since I'm starting out as a curmudgeon. It makes more sense to "Start. Until" than to wait for the next life to begin. No better time than the present.
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