| Yet another bit of wisdom from the trees.
I've said before that I don't believe it to be ethical to intrude on someone else's life uninvited. Even when invited, everything in that person's life should still be treated as valid, as something that I don't have the right to force to change. My understanding of that lesson is why I try very hard to not form judgments about people without thinking good and hard about what I know about them.. it's why I try to not put people into boxes in my mind and why I try not to use labels when talking about someone... It's rare that you'll hear me say something like "That person is mean" or at least I hope it's rare.
I've had that lesson stretched out a bit lately.. while I understood that it covered things like what people decide to wear or how they decide to behave, I hadn't attached it to their perceptions. I guess I treated perception as a sense, like hearing or touch, like it was something that's just there and works a certain way and that's it. Now I understand that another person's perception belongs to that person just like their clothes or words or choices... it's something that's covered under the "everything in the person's life" clause. Once I started seeing perception as an actual thing belonging to a person, I started wondering about some other lessons the mountains taught me... some of them make more sense now... how a person's actions should be the basis for my perceptions instead of what I think about that person's actions; how my perception of the world was just as important as my reactions to the world; how changing my perceptions helps me to see out of my world and into the worlds of others.
So I have a new fine line to learn the boundaries of... forcing someone's perceptions to change is as wrong as forcing someone's actions to change. Changing my actions solely in order to change someone's perceptions is the same... though that doesn't mean I can't change my actions. It's that the reasons should be different. If I'm going to change something I'm doing, it should be that I recognize that I should be doing something differently. If that happens to change another's perception of me, then that's a reaction to something I made right within myself and not due to my wanting to meddle with those perceptions.
Said another way: Good first impressions should be the result of who I actually am instead of who I want people to see me as. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| Last night was definitely a good experience. They didn't have a french horn for me to use (and I'm still kicking myself for not bringing my mellophone with me) but they gave me music and a t-shirt and enjoyed my singing of my parts, especially when noone else had that particular line ^_^
There are a lot of things that seem to remain the same no matter what kind of band I'm in... the trumpets and saxes ribbed eachother and threw good-natured insults across the group; ALL of the trombones are named Chris; half of the clarinets wanted to be playing something else (usually a bass clarinet) and the percussion section was so late... how late were they? They were so late that none of them showed up. ^_^ But everyone really enjoyed themselves, including me and the other 3 new people, and I'll be back next week.
As an asside, I'm seriously considering using some of the spare foam I have lying around to make a soft-case for my mellophone... I really don't want to drag a 10 lb case around in order to carry around a 3 lb instrument... especially since I'm not nearly as likely to hurt it in transit as I was in high school :P | | comments: Leave a comment |
| In the movie Armegeddon, there's a good quote that just about sums up my mood right now:
"Great, I got that "excited/scared" feeling. Like 98% excited, 2% scared. Or maybe it's more - It could be two - it could be 98% scared, 2% excited but that's what makes it so intense, it's so - confused. I can't really figure it out. " ~Oscar (the cowboy-stereotype char)
I think I'm a bit less confused and my current percentages are around 80/20, but the general idea is spot on. I was a band geek in high school. I hung out with band geeks and a smattering of other therians in high school. I was a band geek in college... when my forestry labs didn't happen to be in the same schedule block as marching practice: I was a forestry geek when they did conflict. While stuck in Omaha, I was slightly envious of a co-worker when he tried out for, and made, a place on the Omaha Community Orchestra. I think I would have been more envious if I didn't have an over-riding desire to spend as much of my non-work time as humanly possible with my mate. I also kicked around the idea of volunteering at some local high school band... but that didn't happen for the same reason. Now that the root of that desire (the unsavory nature of work) is gone, I'm finally finding that spending a bit of time doing other things isn't as untennable as it used to be... and then I bumped into this website: http://www.philadelphiafreedomband.com/ and spent a few weeks chewing over the idea of playing again.
Now, high school band was about as full of cliques and drama as possible without completely disrupting practice. Two prime examples: I was constantly having to console my second-chair horn about her myriad breakups. Constantly. During practice! I also entered a permanent state of schism with the clarinet section when their first-chair and I had a falling-out over 'band loyalty' when I was called to the principal's office to 'offer testimony' when two freshman trumpets were caught throwing gravel at a few (non-band) people I usually ate lunch with. College band had considerably less clique/drama issues. In fact, we may have had too few clique/drama issues. The entire band was so casual/relaxed that none of us really made any effort to connect... at least not outside of the usual rampant hooking-up during the first few months :P
Now I have a chance to be in a band where everyone not only cares about playing (because they're there) but where there's already a built-in social commonality. Add to that the fact that I'll essentially be sight-reading all night (which I was never terribly good at) and that I haven't played in 5 yrs and a french horn mouthpiece is one of the more painful to get re-used to, you can understand my 80/20 feelings. ^_^
But I have this nagging feeling that I'm going to enjoy myself immensely, starting with the moment I hold a horn again. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| ... i'm not pregnant.
every time this happens, i feel worse about it... we manage to have sex when my body thinks it's fertile, i miss a period, wait a few weeks for good measure... then nothing... | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | I've never had other people shift in my dreams before... There was a blond lion and some kind of bird. We had to get across a continent and took our own paths to get back to a small town by a river... reunion and shifting together is another something new, too. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Seriously, people... if your day is so packed that the only "while I have a moment" time you have is in the bathroom, you need to fix your schedule. I don't need to hear you (loudly) discuss how your sister doesn't feel well, how the person on the other end so needs to go to a dog breeder's website and get the last puppy they have because it's soooo cute, nor do I need loud, somewhat grating laughter to accompany my 'contemplations'. Bathroom etiquette changes as we grow up... talking on your cell is perfectly fine in high school bathrooms, moderately fine in college, though you would have gotten odd looks due to the content, but in an employee bathroom? No. Those convos are best had, oh I dunno, maybe in the expansive hallway just outside the bathroom where everyone else has personal cell conversations? In the lobby? In a spare conference room in your office? In an email?
*gets off soapbox* | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| A month ago, I had my first bout of foehnschmertzen... the icky, cranky, achy, general all-around bad-juju-ness that sometimes gets swept in front of the first warm wind of the year. I'll have to look up the story again, but the chinnook (or whatever you call it in your region) is a wind that sweeps down from higher up, drying and warming and gaining momentum as it comes. It sweeps all kinds of nastiness with it that traditionally likes the cold, so people sometimes get affected by that ickyness before the wind shows up. I've felt a few before back home, but this reactio n was my strongest so far. Now that I know what it feels like, hopefully I can help me and my mate mitigate it next time.. we basically just ate out and vegged and snapped at each other for two days.... not the best of times.
Other stuff going on... some good and bad, but I'll post those later... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| This is the first time I've heard that man speak since I walked away from his faith and church so many years ago. I'd forgotten his manner and, since this is where I write so as to remember, I'll remind myself here.
The phrase in the title has fallen somewhat out of use. I remember the first time I heard it.. it was a Bugs Bunny cartoon of all places ^_^ I thought about why this person was chosen to pray in front of the nation today and what I remember of him, and that phrase (and the awfully stereotyped Chinese manner in which Bugs said it) came to mind... the first part especially. Everyone knows what the big stick is for. It's for whacking people with, figuratively or literally. The speak softly part doesn't get thought about much... why speak softly when you're carrying it? It seems that no one actually speaks softly when carrying a big stick, so what's the point? You speak softly so that the person you want to hit doesn't notice the stick until it's too late. That man has a very soft, reasonable voice. It helps that he also has a very soft, reasonable manner... but he does have a big stick that he uses liberally. There are lots of spikes on his stick and they all have names on them... groups of people who don't happen to perfectly match his 'world view'... I'm sure those names are polite versions.. the kinds of terms you'd use to explain something to your grandmother, but they're there.... There's one other thing about this stick... versions of it tend to show up in other people's hands wherever he's been, where you'd least expect them. My parents' hands for example. I respect quite a few groups written on that man's stick... I'm part of a few as well.. it saddens me that there's one more barrier between my parents and I that I don't know how to breach... and that that man's stick will get that much more attention now.
...The music, on the other hand, was gorgeous! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I have a gap in my memory lasting for ... I think more than a semester in college. One of my last memories before that gap is during my last hitch in Utah before coming back to school. This was right after a several-year-long relationship ended with me learning of my weeks-old replacement via email... after my mate gave me one of a pair of turtle hair clips that I bought for her so that it would keep me safe and bring me home... before (I think) I had occasion to not return, and occasion for the turtle clip to remind me that at least one person would miss me if I didn't come back.
The other younger woman on the crew noticed that I was withdrawn earlier that week and had received a brief version of events in reward for her concern... We were working a ridge that had a two-track road and a drainage ditch running atop it. I got back to the car a few minutes before she was due back, stowed my gear and decided to take a closer look at the little dry ditch... nothing much there, but it reminded me of a concrete cousin by my parent's house.. which reminded me of how I used to run down it , running curves up and down alternate sides and jumping the little trickle of water at the bottom. I wondered if the sides of the little ditch would be stable enough for such antics, and tried it.. the sides steepened quickly and I was reduced to running across the top, hopping from side to side as my balance shifted... then I had a thought that almost tumbled me into the ditch: I was enjoying myself. Was I allowed to enjoy myself after what has happened earlier that week? That was one of the very rare moments when She has taught me a valuable lesson without me directing my awareness to her... Yes, I can choose to enjoy a moment, even in the midst of an emotional upheaval that my mind retreated from soon afterward. And, like other things I choose, those moments grow into something more than themselves because they're a choice.
... why write this now? It goes back to the first lesson She taught me.. about what can and can't be taught... I wonder if the lesson of choosing joy is something that can't be taught until a person comes upon it themselves... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | ...my body has decided to skip a period, fester hope and then dash it as soon as I say something. *sigh* | | comments: Leave a comment |
| My brain's a curious thing.. it comes up with interesting stuff under stress. While I don't want to turn this into a "what's wrong with christianity" post (cause there's one down there somewhere), the whole concept of everyone's life having a divine, pre-destined purpose always bothered me. I think it stems from a tendency to confuse fate and purpose. The current definition of fate reads something like "that which is inevitably predetermined". People take one look at the predetermined part and immediately think that its an unchangeable, set-in-stone-from-birth kind of thing when I'm not sure that's how it was intended.
My view on fate changed a bit last night... fate is anything inevitable about your future due to the decisions you and everyone around you have made. It's not some whim of some diety somewhere, it's just an extension of the path you are already on and applies to those events that have a so-high-you're-not-avoiding-it probability. Something like when we decided to leave Nebraska. After that point, we were fated to go through certain things: moving, getting lost, locating nearby chinese food... things like that. Fate isn't some far-in-the-future thing that you can't predict now. I can't say "I'm fated to retire at age 60" because it's not a firm extension of either the decisions I've made on the topic, or of decisions other people/government have made about stuff that affects retirement age.
While everyone has a current fate, I don't think too many people have purpose, a point to life, an answer to the "why am I here" question. Two reasons: I don't believe that part of christian dogma holds water, and people don't bother giving themselves a purpose... at least not on purpose. The average person doesn't usually run into a problem with this... they either subscribe to the "god's plan" line of thinking, or they default their purpose to whatever it is they do... or they just never introspect enough to run across this problem. For those of us who actually think about ourselves, purpose is usually gained in one of two ways, the default one above, or by actually defining for ourselves what our purpose is. Purpose also doesn't have to be life-long or eternal or set in stone.. it changes as you change, or your surroundings or job or point of view about life. Discovering that a purpose you gave yourself isn't valid anymore shouldn't be a problem; you gave it to yourself! It's like trying out a new flavor of ice cream and discovering that you don't like it very much. That shouldn't stop you from trying a new flavor in the future, or from getting something you do like next time you're at the store. If I give myself a purpose, I can damn well change it when it doesn't fit anymore.
So what's the point of this post? My fate at the moment looks something like this:
- I'll write some more code today
- I'll go home and be kissed and hugged and nudged and looked at by the denizens of my apartment (with the corollary that I'll kiss, hug, pet and look at said denizens ^_^)
- I'll be playing boardgames tonight
- I'll still be tired till at least friday morning.
- I'll be curling this winter
My purpose is an entirely different beast. It looks something like this:
- To provide for my mate
- To do my job
- To grow as a person
- To be a shaman for my family
I gave myself the second list. The first grew out of all the decisions I've made up till this moment, and all the decisions made by everything connected to me (ie. the universe).
The reasons for this post? I don't think I've been doing a good enough job at purpose 4 up there... there's been too much of trying to be everything and not enough of letting her be some things I think... Impinging on someone elses purpose doesn't serve balance. Hard lesson to learn, and hard to apply, too. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Pressing sadness... makes everything slow and ... I don't like it.
The guitars will be have their wall mounts tonight. I'll get to cross off a project and our dog gets her 'spot' by the sliding door back.
And now something completely different: Your car's sound system is way too loud if I can feel the air vibrate when you drive by... especially since I'm on the 4th floor. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Ramblings | | Time: | 09:30 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/happy.gif) good |
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| Flight! Glorious Flight!
Dreams have been far more involved than usual recently.. first there was a dragon to bribe with a blue and red jewel necklace so that she would haul me across a body of water on a mattress.. then there was a pet adoption place where they free-roamed around playground-type structures and the people gravitated to what structures they liked, then met the pets there, and I met a tiny tiny kitten that I so wanted to take away but I remembered that I already had my dog and (non-existent) cat at home and couldn't have anymore.. Then last night, I flew.. and for the first time, it didn't stop working when I realized that I was flying! I was helping to build school equipment and was there to offer expertise on some part of it... I flew back and forth between site and staging area, faster than the hauling trucks, and lighted on diving board towers and roofs and so enjoyed myself. ^_^
A wolf has been in at least one, too. Sitting... watching... near enough to the same one that named me as to be twins. I only remember seeing him for a just long enough to be remembered, but not long enough to do anything... the same as always now that I think back on it. Just there. Reminding me of who I am, I suppose.. or checking up.. seeing if I'll notice him and remember.
Giza talked to me after my last post and mentally thwapped me a bit for wanting to push my ankle too hard... he didn't know till the end that he was one of the few exceptions to the don't-want-people rule (I didn't even know myself till his chat window popped up :P) and that talking to said exceptions is one of a very few ways out of that kind of mood for me. So, thanks again. One of a very few friends made in the AF came up for the weekend and we tourist-ed him around Philly for a bit then went on a "Jay and Silent Bob" trip to Red Bank and White Castle and a boardwalk. ^_^ I'm not the fan that he and my mate are, but I still had fun.
The atlantic... I finally got to see, but still haven't touched. I've seen all three great waters that this country boarders now.. and all three are very different. The Atlantic doesn't have the feel of raw, unbridled power that I know from the Pacific... but then I haven't touched the Atlantic yet :P The Gulf was much quieter... still dangerous, but not in the same overbearing-threatening way... My usual mantra of don't-turn-your-back wasn't needed as fervently as there as in the Pacific.. but I think it'd be wise to maintain in the Atlantic as well. The waters are darker here.. and the horizon's shorter-feeling.
As far back as I can remember, I've never had good dreams about the ocean.. not nightmares, but not too far from that either. The dream waves are always something to fear, even though usually the other people around didn't.. they were disproportionally high for the beaches, hugely powerful. Strangely though, the fear/power in the dreams doesn't negatively affect my view of real beaches though. I love going to the ocean, no matter what the season, and will likely be in the water no matter the situation, too. (at least with my feet, no rip-tides or hypothermia for me, thanks) Maybe the awe-inspiring nature of these places manifests into the huge waves of my dreams? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | I have these bleak periods on occasion when all the little petty things that people do around me seem to pile up and up and up in my brain and won't go away... I don't know what triggers them or I'd avoid it like the plague. The first time this happened in college, I wound up going to the football stadium and running/doing stairs till I just about fell over from exhaustion, then went back to my dorm room and slept for about 16 hours. Other times, I've simply fallen off the social radar for a while... spending my time in video games or hiking; anything that didn't involve other people. Neither of those options are particularly tasteful at the moment though.. I twisted my ankle so the first is out, as is unfortunately part of the second. The rest of the second though... I don't want to pull away from some of the radar I've edged into. I liked our first outing up to Lupine's and I'm still looking forward to the Mushroom festival and a possible meet with Giza in the relatively near future and playing boardgames with the guys at a local-ish gameing store doesn't rub me the wrong way like it might have in similiar situations. I do want to go away for a bit though... I wonder if my ankle will be feeling up to a short hike this weekend... maybe... | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 1. A birthday. My mate's. ^_^ I have a whole list of things we're going to do and she doesn't know about any of it. It's been a while since I've surprised her with events. I even got her a present while she was in the store and she doesn't know what it is. *bounces* funfunfunfun
2. Apartment Wiring vs Vacuum! Score is tied: 1-1! News at 11. Ok, not really, but the tie is real. I finally got us off our collective duffs to vacuum our apartment after (time period masked due to sheepishness) and what happens? Not 30 seconds after I plugged it in, I trip a circuit. I've NEVER tripped circuits with a vacuum before! The craziness comes from some crazy wiring snafu wherby the entire living room (sans the connecting wall to the next apartment), the library AND the kitchen's half-wall are all on the same circuit! Thus, all of our major electronics are on the same curcuit! And this after we carefully planned our livingroom so that our TV center and the computers were NOT plugged into the same wall. *sigh* So much for assuming a kitchen wall would be on the kitchen curcuit.
3. The Journey Circle. I'm going to go. Noone learns anything by just trying it once. I think my main flaw last time was not recognizing that I was 'there' until I got surprised back into being 'here'. That's not a good way to leave things, I think. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So much for my attempt to post more often... *sheepish*
Lesse.. my last post was right before my visit to the local journey circle, so I guess that's a good place to start. I showed up early like they asked me to, since it was my first visit. From the first moments, I felt a type of kindred with the people there.. I haven't felt had that kind of kinship to anyone since way back when I was active on the old therianthrope bbs's. They went over a whole speal about how it works and asked me what my background and interest were... that's where I got a bit shy. I know perfectly well that being tutored by the mountains and trees is more normal than otherwise in some shamanistic cultures, but journeying isn't something I have too much experience in. The drumming at the start sent me back to my first night in Montana... there was a drumming group on campus each full moon and my first night there happened to be one such night. I wandered about campus and followed the sounds and spent several hours just enjoying the drums and the night... (any my first encounter with a wolf, but that's another story).. But back to the nearer past.. They asked me if I'd read a few authors on the subject, and I haven't, then they asked how I learned. That's where I didn't really know how to answer.
They see the 'other' place where they journey to as a destination. I see it as an overlay on 'this' place. Really, there's no difference in location between 'this' place and the 'other' place, just a different perspective. My teachers taught me how to alter my perspective almost at will.. to be able to hear the wind and the trees and the mountains and my totem with not just my human ears, but with my shaman ears as well. I've used the analogy of a separate set of the 5 senses that can overlay the ones most people use. However, they also taught me how to meditate in a certain fashion so as to separate those sets of senses. This meditation is very similar to what the circle members teach for getting to that 'other' place.
When we lay down to journey, I think I can say I went through 4 phases... the first was trying to turn off my awareness of the other people in the room... their small sounds and their presence both. The meditation mentioned above helped a lot with that, but I think it still took me longer than some around me, even if just for the fact that I had just met them. The second part was where I spent most of my time... this is where I tried taking their instruction and using it. I tried to think of some suitable sipapu, or path to the 'other' place, but everything my mind came up with wasn't working. Finally, I found myself looking at an ant hole that I knew from my time in Panama more than half my life ago. There were no ants, but the hole was there and it turned out to be a good path. Some part of me didn't realize that I'd succeeded. I drifted to a few other power places I'd known growing up, not even realizing that I didn't need to be looking for a path any longer. The only thing that really let me know that I was there was a voice.. The same one that etched words into my being before... The rough sense of what it said was "Why do you look for something that is not here?". I was so surprised, that I found myself back inside my own senses... and floated in a state of near perfect relaxation, but aware that I was 'here' instead of 'there' until the time for journeying was over.
That phrase haunted me for a while... as it should. It's the kind of question that could refer to so many things.. the circle, my journey, my attempt to use that method, my hopes for a better life here, my hopes for going to the circle in the first place... enough and more to drive me batty if I tried to make sense of it. Then something happened (as things tend to do).. my mate and I were talking about something, and it's been long enough that the something escapes me, and she asked almost the exact same question. My mind froze for a moment... long enough that I panicked a bit that she might have thought I was pausing for some worse reason than a complete brain freeze.
That moment offset me so much that I simply put it away for a time. Now that the journey circle is starting back up soon, I've pulled that moment out to chew over, trying to decide if I will go back.. and what I will expect from the experience this time. I'd like to think I simply had something of a prescient moment... but thinking back, the main reason I even went, is that I was feeling disconnected from my chosen path... I think my heart's desire that night was to reconnect with my totem. I still do. But I no longer think that such a journey is the way to do so.
I went on my first hike of the season a few weeks ago... a thursday evening with a local hiking club.. about 6 miles in Valley Forge. There was one point where I let myself go the way my teachers taught me... and my connection to Her was reaffirmed the second I began to do so. She claimed me and I claimed Her right back again... and that became something of a mantra for a while... "I am yours, I am yours..."
I think I should walk the paths I know when I want to shift my reality. I think I may still attend the circle, but I don't think I'll be expecting much from it... not at first anyways. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| In a normal universe, I guess I should be nervous. I'm going to a new place, alone, meeting new people to participate in something completely new. Well... maybe not completely new, but this precise thing with any kind of group is new... and I've started not making sense :P
I'm going here to participate in a drumming circle/shamanic journeying group. It's something I've wanted to do for a looooong time... ever since I started down this path. I know that solo practitioners are perfectly natural, and the norm in some cases, but I have felt the need for reinforcement from time to time. I don't know why I'm suddenly ready to do this now... I've known about the group for months now, and I've heard of other groups in other places I've lived. I think it has to do with my fairly recent realization that I stopped doing anything even remotely shamanic for the years I was in Nebraska. The only two exceptions to that was an attempt to call storms (to get out of group exercising :P) and once with my last boss. He'd been handed a life-twister by his doctors and, though his body was being taken care of, his soul wasn't. He's a practicing Buddhist and the only person I met during those years who would know anything about using sage in purification/meditation. I'd been allowed to pick enough to make a wand a while back and had never needed to use it... If the impact/worth/true meaning of the gift had been known to our supervisors, I doubt I would have gotten away with giving it to him. But I knew he knew it's value, how to use it honorably, and that it would help, and it did... immensely and immediately. Just its presence in the office was calming.
But anyways... I'm looking forward to tonight in a calm, anticipatory, satisfied sort of way... almost like I'm already there and traveling, even though I'm still sitting here at work. But then again, that's a shaman for you :P | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Funny thing about these kinds of trips... they don't wind up being vacations. A trip? Definitely. A vacation? Not so much.
My mate added something to my list of things to tell my sister and new brother-in-law: Don't lie to each other, not even the small things that people don't seem to realize they're lying about. Stuff like "How was work?" "Fine." when it really wasn't, or when only parts of it were... or things like "Did you call so-and-so?" "Yep, they weren't there" when really no such call was made.
However, I am actually glad to be back to work. That's a new feeling for me. ^_^ | | comments: Leave a comment |
| My little sister is getting married this weekend. For some, that statement might be followed by the nearly omnipresent phrase: "That makes me feel old"... or some variant thereof. For me, what follows is what comes to my mind instead:
I have a damn good marriage. There are tons of reasons why I think so, and most of them are very dependent on who my mate and I are, how we see each other and our relationship and how we've built it... but I want my sister to be able to have a good marriage, too. We might have had differences (large ones sometimes) while growing up, but I wouldn't wish a bad marriage on anyone. I thought about what I would say if it was my daughter that was getting married and came up with a few things.
1. My parents probably aren't going to do anything like this. I didn't even get a full-blown sex talk and I grew up a bit before all the sex-ed PC-ness got out of hand, and I doubt my sister got one. I was about 1500 miles away from my parents when I got married, so no talk there either... and I think it's a tradition that should be revived.
2. Of all the millions of little reasons and ways that my marriage is good, i think there are really three that I'd share with my sister: (and here they are so I don't forget :P)
a. Even though you've lived with your intended for a while, you don't know everything about each other and you haven't seen all the possible idiosyncrasies that the other has. Accepting someone as a mate goes beyond accepting what you know about your intended; it includes everything you don't know, too. Even now, my mate and I find out new things about each other, but those new-things-that-you-didn't-tell-me-about aren't the threat that some people make them into.
b. Find some way to remind each other why you love each other. My mate and I will ask each other occasionally why the other loves/puts-up-with/takes-care-of-so-well-of us. Not because we forgot why, or think that the answer might change, but to renew our awareness of those little things that we fell in love with in the first place.
c. Find something to do together. Someone once told me that friends that don't do anything together don't have too much a point, and I think that applies to marriages, too. It doesn't have to be horribly time consuming or involved, just something. My mate and I are on one end of this scale: we do almost everything together, but that's because we enjoy doing so much together.
So, that's what I'm going to tell my sister and soon-to-be brother-in-law. May some good portion of the happiness I have fall to them as well. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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wet![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/thoughtful.gif){kind=small}
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pondering![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/opiummmm/foxies/okay.gif){kind=small}
wondering