physical metaphors for the non-physical

When two bodies in motion approach and come close to interact with each other their directions change and depending on the parameters may simply have their paths altered, or orbit one another.

Anita and I orbited each other in what was clearly a very stable orbit, of course at first the orbits are perturbed (indeed the objects may orbit briefly and fling off) but our orbits were settling into a stability that was becoming quite stable and would endure.

Unlike the physical world, one body can instantly cease to exist (in death)  leaving the other body (suddenly without the interacting forces) to resume its uninfluenced "straight line" motion as when a string is released in a sling.

I felt like that body at the time of Anitas death, and I still feel like that body now.

I have spent the last 4 years wondering about my directions for unlike an inanimate body I can make a choice in directions, the problem lies in being able to perceive the world well enough to make good decisions on that.

So in some ways I've come to a decision on my direction today. I've decided to sell our home, invest that money and move on. Staying here seems to serve no purpose and the asset which is our home would be perhaps as much of a burden to me intellectually as it would be a financial risk of the tenants ruined the good works we put into making it our home.

One last point occurs to me from the physical model, and its a shift from the gravitational view to that of the particle view. Quantum entanglement provides a view on how two particles which once interacted can remain coherent although separated by distance. So it is my hope that our interaction brings about an entanglement of what I hope persists of both of us. While my "local realist" view is that she is not here, perhaps (as I have previously conjectured) I'm not really here and that we can eventually be together "somewhere".

who knows ... but for now I'm off on another direction ... waiting for the next disturbance or collision

Preserving (my) memory of love

I initially thought to keep this private, but upon writing it I though it may benefit others who are processing their grief.

I keep repeating "I love you Darling" and occasionally speak to Anita as if she could hear me. At times I wonder what I'm doing with saying that. I mean obviously I'm recalling Anita and my fondness for her as well as repeating expressions of love that I felt when we were together. But what is that now? Is it an echo of past behaviour; a manifestation of refusal to accept loss; an attempt at consciously preserving an ember of love?

Despite my strength of feelings towards her, and my (beyond) willingness to keep our bond strong it is obvious that time and absence will mean that no new memories can be created and the accuracy and poignancy of old ones will blur and dull.

Just as the leaves of the rain forest trees fall onto the ground and obscure and become one with the soil without effort on my part these memories will do the same as time (like gravity) moves inexorably forward.

In my recollections over these last (almost) 4 years  I have indeed found exactly that. Photographs of course help to retain memories, but in some ways they eventually become the memories, and it is only in discussions with others that the memories are teased out again. In the end however strong my feelings are, I will be "let down" by the inaccuracy and failings of human biology and human memory.

But there is perhaps something else which is perhaps a habitual response, even maybe genetically encoded in humans to do. But to what end?

I'm of course not sure, but here in Australia we find a gemstone called Opal; its beauty and vivid colours are attractive and it is also a permanent record of what went before it. One of the theories of the creation of Opal is that microorganisms are essentially fossilised in the surrounding layers of clay (which over years of layers eventually became rock). Microscopic examination of opals reveals that there is an abundance of microorganisms embedded within the opals.

Perhaps this is what I'm doing; forming memories which are permanent beautiful reminders of what was beautiful to me. While eventually each memory will lose its form due to the pressures of new memories and activities, a core of beauty will remain encapsulated in the clay rock of my memory.

In a song by Queen, Freddie sings:

Who wants to live forever,
Who dares to love forever,
When love must die.

as I've written before, I wonder if what persists in the universe / multiverse is the repetition of thought, a strength of reinforced pattern. So maybe we die, but the expression of our love may just remain forever, long after I'm ceased to be.

Maybe one day (it is fanciful for a romantic like me to hope) that opal of memory will provide some beauty for others to see. If so then its a worthy thing to try to leave behind.

Thought for the Day

It is my way to write down in a journal my thoughts when I'm moved to do so. I have a number of headings to these thoughts, but one such is "thought for the day". As I approach 4 years without Anita I thought I'd share one such thought with you.

What was and what is and what is only in memory.

Its easy to live in the now and be unbound to the past. However living that way brings reactions to things and fears from half remembered things which are twisted in memory by the inaccuracies of human memory.

To live in the past and have all actions dictated by what was is fraught with an inability to move beyond that point, stuck in an arrested development, held ransom to nostalgia or some other manifestation.

The question is how to live with what was and what is and yet move forwards to adapt to and enjoy what comes. It becomes more profoundly difficult when that encompasses the loss of ones you love. I write the word in the sense of present continuous not past, because in many ways that love is undying. Sure, some people love and forget and move one .. sometimes its due to completion, sometimes its due to growth in their "self" to realise that maybe they didn't love that person, but were projecting a desire to love onto that person because they (quite simply) were there.

For the grieving person living with the reminders of that love makes living hard. These reminders may be the house you build together, the places you visited together or even the scars on your body of things you went through together. So not all can be discarded even if you wanted to.

Though it has been nearly 4 years I struggle with the absence, with the feeling of love that is not possible to be returned. For if I loved someone from afar who never returned my love that would be quite different to having been together in love and without any trauma or fight to be a breakup, with only the daily evidence of it getting better with much more to happen as we aged together to lose that in a single sudden stroke is hard to comprehend.

Humans are designed to be able to carry trust and love for many years , I would argue that from our earliest nomadic times such things were amplified by the evolution of who we are. So I can not forget Anita and the love for her, even though my intellectual brain knows that I'm not just "working away from her, to return later in the season".

Perhaps I will return ... either way I will only know when I die. At that point in time my knowledge will perhaps never be complete (if death is simply the end).

So I remain dogged by who I was designed and shaped into being by evolution of my species, dogged by a beautiful thing - a love shared with a beautiful spirit.

I hope you never truly know what it is that I'm talking about.

learning to love the life I have

Its been some time since my dearest Anita died (it was in August 2012). I have learned many things since that time and while I still feel her loss deeply I have some things to share which may be of benefit (or may not).

Perhaps I was lucky to be struck with a post operative infection from a heart valve replacement surgery (which was performed 6 months or more before she passed away), but with no sense or irony I say that having to struggle for my life - wanting to be dead but not being dead - becoming aware of getting better and (out of habit) fighting to struggle for regaining my personal fitness has proven beneficial.

Like joining the "Foreign Legion" to forget a broken heart the struggle to survive (even reflexively) has shown me that I go on. It has also perhaps helped me to accept in some ways that is not altogether bad (that I go on).

Most certainly I have many down days, where I just lay on the couch in my not at work times. I avoid doing things which I know should be done. I feel pain at doing things (which we did together) alone.

However I have come to see that while there is sadness and loneliness there are actually glimpses of happiness and on occasions I feel OK about those things which are not related to what we shared together.

Questions

I have reflected a LOT on things including what would happen if by a miracle she appeared alive at home and we could start again. Would I still be able to be the happy person she loved or would my suffering have made me into a person whom she would grow tired of?

If we are to meet in the after life I feel that it is my job in this life to heal myself to be that person whom she loved and respected.

If there is no after life then what harm can come from healing myself in preparation for our (it won't happen) meeting anyway?

my only answer so far

I have come to feel that the pain and fatigue that I feel in the memory of her and what has gone before her death is simply a burden I should carry. I should carry it for I am the primary vessel of her memory and of her spirit in this world.

A song came to my mind some time back by Bob Scott: He ain't heavy, he's my Brother.


I feel now that the burden I feel in her loss and absence is made more profound for me simply because I have no training in carrying it.

Like all fitness training, it just takes time and will power to become strong enough to be able to "lift that weight" or "run that marathon" or "do that maths".

So I do not try to turn away from the pain, or down play the love that I still feel for her. Instead I try to carry that with me and still be able to bring the memories of her to our friends without being struck down. Without making everyone feel uncomfortable.

I've been trying to walk this path for a year now, and while I'm still in training I am getting stronger. There are times when I can laugh with my friends about things we (meaning all of us including my wife) shared.

So while it is indeed "a long and winding road" to "who knows where" I thought I would share this with you so that any who are reading this and suffering grief of your own you can also pick up your load and carry that love forward.

The love we shared should not be a thing which can be overwhelmed by just her passing. She ain't heavy ... she's my lover.

I wish you peace.

Robin Williams - not a eulogy but a reflection

I heard yesterday that Robin Williams had passed, perhaps through his own choice. This is sad to hear as he was enormously talented and (among other things) a great actor.

A friend of mine on FB commented how he felt Robin died so young, and how he (my friend) was saddened and felt it that Robin had been stolen from us, and that it was wrong "not so young and not like this" which of course resonated very strongly with me.

This is not so much a Eulogy to the late Robin Williams (for of course I did not know him), as a perspective on the death of those we know and what it should mean for us.

People who know me know that my own dearest wife was taken from us at an early age.

She was only 33 when she was suddenly and tragically taken and we are all robbed of her beautiful influence.

Robin Williams in contrast was 63 when he passed from us, which is perhaps earlier than many expect but it is my view that he had a good life and a good quality of years here.

That Robin had 3 score years, was married and raised his own families is testimony to how rich Robins life was (despite the demons he felt in his heart).

Anita was in many ways just starting on her life, and she was about to embark on having a family. She taught me many things, both in life and in death.

Robbed is all I choose to say on that matter here.

From my earliest days my closest friend was Darryl, he lived just down from my house a few blocks away. We grew up together and did many things together in our childhood and adolescence. I think its fair to say I was part of his family as much as he was mine.

When we left school, Darryl went to join the Air Force to do Electronics and I went to Uni to do Biochem.

Sadly he never completed his course as he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma and died before his 21st birthday.

He left a grieving family who felt cheated, robbed of him too early. So did I. To say his death had an impact on my life would be a grand understatement.

I myself have been cognizant of death most of my life. The reminders have always been around me, even my own health, when I was recently diagnosed with an Aneurysm (rather than it being discovered at the autopsy post mortem) I instead had surgery which would "save my life".

Alas, the only truth I have found in this world is that we all die. 

To me what matters in life is how you live and love. Knowing that you will die, and knowing that you will not in all likelyhood know when or how should make you more strident in your quest for love and happiness in life.

The passing of Robin Williams should teach us about how we love ourselves and how from that point we can actually love others and allow others to love us.

Too many people are too busy with bullshit in their lives, making plans and probably making choices of putting things above life, love and happiness (like career or petty arguments). Too many are (at some level) lost in substance abuse, the abuse of others and the abuse of themselves. Many deny it and it is only in the death of someone very close to them they see things as they really are.

I say that if you find yourself touched by the passing of Robin Williams then in the celebration of the life he had why not reflect on your own and refocus yourself on what really matters to you.

If you knew you were going to be dead tomorrow what would you do? What would be important? Sure, statistically you probably won't be dead tomorrow, but why put off your life on the bet that you won't be?

Robin, may you rest in peace and may the world become a better place for your contributions.

Easter views

For an Australian Easter in Spring is something of an epiphany (not that this is my first one). All the (apparently hollow) symbolism actually has meaning when experienced here in the north. Perhaps even more so in the very far north (such as Finland) where the harsh colds and frozen water of winter gives way to the burst of growth of plants.

Reasons for flowers suddenly make sense as they symbolise the cyclic regeneration of the things which seemed to die and pass with the coming of winter, to be renewed with the cycles of the seasons.

So it makes sense for the the Christians to have hijacked this occasion with their Easter message of death and life after the everlasting life after death.

I must say that as one who does not believe in reincarnation (the variouso non christian views of it), and is also vexed about the idea that there is anything after life (but certainly not in outright denial), I have found over the years that the Christian messages at Easter are somewhat confusing and incomprehensible (such as the God who is man thing, the sacrifice of God himself as a part of Christ ... the list goes on). I lay the blame for that at the feet of those who so incapably teach it. Far more are called to serve Faith than seem to be able to teach. Perhaps too I as the student was not yet "prepared ground" to allow such things to grow.

Back at the end of 2012 I wrote that who I was and who I was becoming was dead. Of course this "death" is somewhat of a metaphor. Perhaps that post (or this one the year later) may go some way towards explaining that metaphor.

I re-watched Cast Away (Tom Hanks) lastnight (having put it off a few times for various reasons) to find that there was a message within that quite similar to my own journey.

My view is that while Chuck the human survived, so much of Chuck died that his survival grew him into a different version of himself. His epiphany came when he realised:

I couldn't even kill myself the way that I wanted to, I had power over nothing.

When he came back to "civilization" he was clearly a changed man. His perception of time "that ticking clock" was altered (perhaps forever) by those long years alone, where clocks had no real meaning. He had in some ways discovered things inside him which he never knew existed.

I think its fair to say that the Chuck who landed on the island died, but the Chuck who emerged was wiser stronger and visibly healthier than the dead Chuck.

Chuck had been reborn: that my friends is the message of Easter.

You don't get that singing in a church and  falling backwards in a bath (paying money for playing a role in a theatric event) you get it from emerging from suffering.

Let me tell you something obvious which many can repeat but don't grok: suffering fucking hurts.

Since Anita passed away I have been attacked at all angles (yet protected in some ways). I have had physical degradation from my the infection near my heart and the death of my wife (closest to my heart) and the constant and grinding loneliness to fill my every night.

So like Chuck I have been in a kind of survival mode since then. Where I just try to keep breathing, even though I have no reason to hope.

These last few months I have had no plan, no idea what tomorrow would bring and even thoughts of plans bring me nothing more than the reminder that my plans were all destroyed that moment when I got that phone call to say she was in hospital with a tumor.

Of course death does not come in an instant, it takes time for everything to sink in and even some days for things to happen. None the less I see that who I was is now gone.

But I have said this before, todays message is about the realisation that (even though I have totally no idea what will be in the furture, even though I still feel the pain of her absence) that life has not finished yet (despite me wishing that it had).

Unlike Chucks fiance Kelly, I have totally no hope to hold onto that Anita may be still alive, yet like her I feel that sense of hope, that the love that bound us still lives.

Somehow this taking a step every day has shown me that while plans can not be made with certainty; that the journey of a thousand steps is reached by taking that step every day.

The difference for me now is that I don't have a map and I don't care. Perhaps that means I will never be lost?

While in many ways the colour has gone from my life at the moment there is still beauty in texture (expressed black and white). The daffodil image to the left here was one I took with my "big camera" of some daffodils that Anita bought one Easter past for our home in Finland. Finns quite like these bright and beautiful plants at this time. If you click it a larger version will load and I hope you will enjoy the textures of that exploring the small beauties in that image.

If I have taken anything of Anita with me into my future I believe it is the understandings of the beauty of small things that she gave me.

The Cathedral at Tampere has some of the works of the artist Hugo Simberg (Anita loved his works and introduced me to them). Of all the churches I've ever entered this is the only one where behind the altar was a message that there is something beyond the grave. Not like the typical Catholic Cathedral: stagnant and brooding where ultimately a message of "pain and death hangs on a cross" looms ... but instead a message of hope beyond what seems hoplessness.

perhaps this is the most meaningful message of resurrection in our daily lives?

Happy Easter and may you find peace

[to Anita: forever your love]

I am Jacks Automated House

In a previous post on this topic I have mentioned how I felt that so much of what I have seen in Art or Literature has been pulled out by my subconscious to be paraded before me in some sort of Dickensian manner, like spectres.Over time I have come to see these as being indicative of how others have suffered in such similar ways as I have (and so have some idea of how I feel), that it is only when I am in their positions that the true accuracy of their expression hits me in the face.

The well meaning psychopath {Psychopathy (/saɪˈkɒpəθi/) (or sociopathy [/ˈsoʊsiəˌpæθi/]) is traditionally defined as a personality disorder, characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavior.} is often taken to say something that will be perceived as supportive but is actually pouring vinegar into the wound.

Something typical like "oh well, its better to have loved and lost than to have never have loved at all"

As it happened  on the night after I took Anita to the airport I came home and did some thing to fix up the house and settled in to watch an old favorite on the screen, MIB. Only days later I found myself gripped by a single scene. Which seemed to play itself before me many times. :



I think that Tommy Lee Jones so accurately portrays in his face all the feelings that I feel when I consider my losses and react to people telling me its better to have loved and lost....

As I have said earlier: its art when it touches you. I don't know why I played this movie on the day she left, but this theme that it contains is one which I have wrestled with for some time. I have also mentioned also in previous posts on this topic sometimes it is in art that you can find some sort of balm if not a healing.

In "Fight Club" they discover a book written by someone who was disturbed. He wrote a series of books about his bodily organs and compared them to himself. Later in the movie the narrator starts quoting from Jack, stuff like:

I am Jack's... complete lack of surprise.
I am Jack's wasted life.

Well years ago I read a short story (like when I was about 12) by Ray Bradbury about an automated house in which it becomes clear that the occupants are no longer there. The house goes on cleaning itself and maintaining itself as best as it can, but without the people in it, its just an empty machine doing its best to maintain its body as it was designed to do.

Well I have come to realize that I am Jacks Automated house.

So to answer Jay's so insensitively posed rhetorical question, it is indeed better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.

For in love I gained so much, I learned so much about being alive and feeling that life, love and death is something I now grasp with greater comprehension than I have ever done. If there is any existence after this then perhaps all these things all these feelings and all this pain will be worth far more to me than a life as an automaton.

To quote from the character of Walter Bishop

The pain is her legacy to you, it is proof that she was here. You can't escape it by building walls around your heart or by vengeance.

From here as to what to do or how to do it, I have no idea. But while my body is functioning I guess that I don't want to become "Jacks wasted life".

Debasement of words devalues their subjects

The modern world seems to be evolving towards faster newer better bigger faster than it ever has. I wonder if that's as much to do with the incredible increase in population as much as it is with the increase communications tools. We strive to give more impact to what we say and do to attract an audience. So greater and greater use of high meaning words is used and it essentially demeans the words themselves.

One such word is love. People are quick to say they "love something" (I love the colour of your shoes) but in their lives there is perhaps no love at all.

Marriages don't last as long, people are having less children, people increasingly don't support their parents, even parents are increasingly wary of their own children.

So in such an environment its hardly surprising that people don't know what love is.

Perhaps in response to an increasing clamor of things to learn about / attract your attention we have debased our values on more long term or permanent things.

The rituals in life are replaced with simply repetition of the mundane, the things we once did that took time also added richness to our lives. Spending 7 hours watching TV does not add richness to your life, nor does several hours on social media.

 Because we are all so busy checking out everything these days we have less time to sit and think and less time to reflect on what has been the progress. A short term view loses perspective of the overall trends.

Sadly people increasingly value convenience over quality. Its part of the 'economic' thinking today. As a result I feel that increasingly people don't even understand love. After all fewer people in western society are married and have family, people are unwilling to work through problems and see dissolution as the solution. As people are increasingly people are isolated from one another such things as permanence seem abstract.

Love and obligation are in some ways related, but of course obligation without love is nothing desirable and so is love without obligation a harmful thing to your spirit.


Once my wife and I were having an argument about a topic (god I can't remember what it was even) and I said something like "I don't want to live my life this way". She interpreted that as a threat to "change or we break up" and later said that aloud. I stopped and said to her something like: No, that's not what I meant at all. I expect that my life with your will be always. I just don't want to always be having conflicts. I want to learn to find a way for us to work things through together so we can be happy together. Not unhappy together.

She saw that I meant what I said (from years of previous working through problems) and that it wasn't a threat but an offer. She wanted us to be together and she saw that was what I wanted too. Importantly she saw that I wanted us to be together and happy ... not just together.


and we were...

Sometimes its important to reaffirm what you believe, to not leave the assumptions unspoken and to follow them trough with what you do. While actions speak louder than words sometimes the words that match the actions go a long way too ... as do some flowers now and then ;-)

Hardening up (the mistake of it)

It is often said that women are soft and men are hard. Any man who has problems in dealing with life is mostly told to "deal with it". Classic Australian vernacular is "take some concrete powder and harden up".

Its bullshit.

One of the myths of western culture (perhaps others) is of the tough guy. The self reliant guy who can go through anything, unaffected. It is the stuff of adolescent male comics.

It is of course a fantasy, something which has perhaps infected society as a romantic meme that such a thing as a tough guy exists. A warrior who battles through life, never needing to express emotions.

In reality it only serves to enable (mainly) men to justify thier distance, their disaffection from those that they love. They can pretend to be pillars of strength not needing to (and probably not knowing how to) love. The movie "once were warriors" is in my view an excellent example of this (and its results) in recent cinema.

Yet love is something we all do, feel and to various extents accept. Accepting love is actually not as easy as it might sound. Part of loving is learning to accept anothers care and help. In some ways learning to accept help results in relinquishing ones ability to do that thing for yourself. Like many things in human life when someone does something for you, you stop doing it for yourself.

In some ways this can make one vulnerable. There could be the threat of withdrawal of the love on the part of the other, which can hurt (this is something of a strategy in some cultures actually). There is also the fact that its easy to become dependent on the love of another, again potentially weakening.

Of course for one who truly loved you (rather than just using your affection to gain control) this not something that they would do.

So I can see why some men choose to harden up.

The reality is however that one does not really harden up, but instead puts on an exterior. A suit of armor in some ways. Its a barrier to accepting things and a signal (by behavior) to "keep away".

In accepting the care and comfort of the one that you love you must inevitably soften up, to prevent yourself from being hard towards the one who is trying to share difficulty with you and to offer you comfort. In fact this can help you to grow stronger and more resilient.

Delicate things like love do not grow on rocky soil.

As the love that I had for my wife grew I allowed her into my heart and allowed her to provide support and comfort. Which was something she naturally wanted to do (as I wanted to do for her). Her loss from my life (well, and from the lives of everyone who knew her) has left me with a softness that is now unsupported.

It is a paradox that at a time when I most need the care and support of the woman I loved, the woman who loved me, I am by virtue of her death devoid of that love and that support. In many ways that is one of the hardest parts to this sort of grieving.

But the solution does not lie in hardening up. Putting on the armor over my bleeding wound will not heal the wound nor will it go away. I have discovered that in the time before I had such love as I did, that I did not support myself, instead I actually hardened up, developed coping strategies, denied that things upset me. Now in the absence of the support and love that I once had I can see that difference.

So I guess what I need to do now is to learn how to give support to myself in the way that she did. Of course I can't actually do that, but knowing what she did I can learn to do that for myself in a different way.

No matter how hard it is to loose the one you loved, it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved before.

So I keep climbing ...

built on solid foundations

There is a song written by Linda Creed called "The Greatest Love of All", as a young person listening to it I often wondered about the focus of the lyrics on the self. I felt it was somehow selfish.

As I grew older I became re-acquainted with the song and (having journeyed some more in life) understood how many people suffer from problems of self worth and self respect.

While I now understand the reference to the self esteem it still seems just a prelude to the greatest love ...

Linda was (so I am told) struggling with cancer when she wrote the song lyrics, so perhaps she was going through a bit of an existential crisis (suffering from breast cancer and struggling with understanding her own mortality).  Having battled with the loss of my lovely wife and in parallel battled with my personal health issues I think I can relate to personal existential crises. From the lyrics something that resonates with me is the theme of needing to love yourself and teach others to love themselves.

I believe the children are our future
Teach them well and let them lead the way
Show them all the beauty they possess inside
Give them a sense of pride to make it easier

I agree with so much of that. However to make what easier? For me that comes in the lines:

Everybody is searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone to fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me

which is at the same time both profound and tragic.
It is profound because the truth is that you must love yourself before you can find strength and before you can even accept love.
It is tragic to me that so many people go through life never loving. Never loving themselves and also never feeling that love from somone else. Linda seems to have learned (from the harshness she found in life?) to depend on herself. Perhaps from that trust then came love.



Loving yourself is a truly important step, but should be the foundation for the love that comes from outside. Its like the base of the Maslow hierarchy if you will, a foundation to be built on to allow you to fulfill more in your life.

Great houses can only be built on strong foundations.

Only from the foundation of loving yourself can come the love for and from others. Without that base the love of others will fall on difficult soil. I believe that without that foundation, that accepting others love will be somehow skewed, as will the love you feel for others.

I'm glad that Linda found the love of her self, for it is a truly important step. But that she perhaps never found another to love her as she (I hope) loved herself is a tragedy. Without that it can be difficult or perhaps impossible to build a loving relationship with another. The love that my wife and I shared was built on the foundations of self respect and self love. From this we developed a relationship where love is given and love is received.

As I examine what I have lost in my wifes passing, I have come to understand just how fortunate I have been to have been able to feel that love (from her to me) and to be able to give her that love too. For no matter what has been taken away from me, I still have the love of myself and (it may seem strange) the love she gave me.
Love is made to be given, so my view is that Linda's song about the Greatest Love of All is just a prelude, a prelude to the greater love that can grow in the hearts of two people who love themselves and each other.

Learning to love your self is the first step on the road to knowing love.  I'd like to write as well as Linda, but I can't. So instead I'll just change the lines a little:

I found that the greatest love of all 
was happening to me.
I found that the greatest love of all
beside of me.
...
It is the greatest love of all

The song ends on a note of hope:

And if by chance, that special place
That you've been dreaming of
Leads you to a lonely place
Find your strength in love

Sadly now I have gone from that special place, to a lonely one. But I have some strength to face it in the love we have. I say have because it can never die.

:-)

Commitment, Love and Marriage

Sadly for many, these do not seem to go together or at least stay together. All too often its only 2 out of three sometimes only one.

Anita and I were lucky that first we loved each other and second got married because we wished to make known that "love and commitment to each other" to all our friends and family. For us marriage was something about putting a name to that commitment and making it a clear statement to all who knew us.

In the early days of us being together it was challenging for us to be together, us living in Finland and me being Australian. She suggested we get married back in about 2006 so that we could be more easily together. I wanted us to be married for all the right reasons, not the reasons of State and Boundaries.

So I began taking steps which would allow me to remain in Finland on my own rights without needing my residency to be based on being married to a Finnish National. I felt that was the best thing to do because:

• it erased all doubt as to why we were getting married
• it gave our friends and families time to grasp that we were actually comitted to each other
• it allowed us to simply be ourselves and not worry about any external forces (like being a foreign national and being able to reside)

When we decided to get married, our wedding was was something which was enjoyed by everyone who came.

I do not think that I could have imagined a more perfect event. Anita was so filled with joy and anticipation, it was clear on her face in every picture (such as this one of her father bringing her to me).

At the reception she (and well everyone) was simply happy and celebrating, filled with the anticipation of our future together and confident that it would be on the whole happy.

Everything from my friends visting from Australia for the wedding through to the interactions of the families just went well. All the pictures we have of the wedding showed happy smiling people. The weather was just what we wanted (-20°C) with puffy powder snow everywhere (this way her dress would not get dirty or wet and it would be a proper Finnish white wedding). You just couldn't ask for a better day.

Why get married? Its about promises and integrity.

For us the reason to get married is to make a clear and public announcement of love and promise of intent to be commitment to each other. We wanted to make it clear that we were committed to each other, that we had not only love for each other, but a willingness to make our lives work together.

Integrity is about:

• consistency of actions,
• values,
• principles,
• expectations.

I regard integrity as the honesty and truthfulness behind actions. Making promises in public (in front of everyone who makes up your life) makes that promise clear and unambiguous to everyone who matters to us, rather than leaving it as something implied or assumed.

Perhaps its lost on many modern / city / social media humans, but once upon a time people had ethics. A promise meant something. A promise was not just words, but the words were both the meaning and the bond to fulfill that promise.

The mark of a man (and by this man I mean human, not male or female as it is so commonly taken to mean in English) is their ability to stand up to their word. A promise is a promise, it is not like the worms of law where lawyers do battle over contracts and what someone is or is not bound to do.

My bond, my promise is not about law, but it is about honour. Shallow and hollow people make promises and fail to keep them, for they have no commitment to anyone,  themselves either.

Anita and I did not like 'pomp an circumstance' (me being an Australian Australian and her being a Finn) so we didn't feel like doing the "tired traditional wedding vows" which mean very little to many and equally little to us. Eventually (either Anita or I, I can't be sure) we stumbled upon this set of vows, which at first glance looks like it is flippant and trivial, but if you read the words carefully (as we did) the meaning suited us perfectly.

Minister: Will you take her as your wife? Will you love her all your life?
me: Yes, I take her as my wife, and love her all my life.

Minister: Will you have, and also hold Just as you have at this time told?

me:  Yes, I will have, and I will hold,
        Just as I have at this time told,
        Yes, I will love her all my life
        As I now take her as my wife.

The essential components of this are that I promised to love her all my life. Simple isn't it. No extra clauses to get interpreted, no get out of it clauses ... my promise was and still is to simply: to love her all my life

That was my promise then and it remains my commitment right now.

Being a man of integrity I will honour that commitment for as long as I live. I will love Anita all my life. After all it isn't hard to love her.

What is hard is not having her by my side.

Life is full of the unexpected. Certainly when we were married the thought of either of us dying was distant. In fact we had discussed aging together and ways to deal with the disparity in ages between us (I being older).

In our minds it would clearly be me who died first leaving Anita alone. It was my fervent wish that Anita not be left alone and uncared for after my passing.

The thought of her being left bereft, abandoned and desolate was (and is) simply painful to me.

I had plans and stratergies for this which I had great confidence in. I was sure in my heart that when she passed away she would be be surrounded up till that point by people who loved and cared for her. She would not be abandoned and would be supported up to the last moments of her life.

Strangely this is exactly what happened, altough not in any way as I had hoped.

So with my wedding anniversary looming tomorrow I just wanted to share something of the lessons I learned in my love of my wife, for those who are getting married and those who may be already married.

Love every day, love your partner every day, settle your fights and work towards being happy together.

cos you never know what will get in the way.

Can't Buy Me Love

God knows I like my coffee. Actually my wife knew that too.

If you don't make espresso coffee yourself at home in any serious way (for example you use one of those pod machines instead of ground coffee) then you probably don't get the importance of a good coffee banger as part of your coffee making routine.

Now there is no end of these things on the market, small ones, big ones ... but because this is aimed at a 'boutique' market the prices are aimed at people who don't ask the prices.

Well that's not me!

Fundamentally I don't want (or need) what amounts to a bin for my used coffee beans to be a $100 item ... its a bin for crying out loud.

My wife shares my sense of thrift in this area and decided that she would make me one for my birthday.

Now this was a little while ago and my coffee banger has been banged on and filled with the used "coffee biscuits" (read this if you have no idea what a coffee biscuit is) many times. Accordingly it does not look like anything from a promo catalog now.

 Essentially my wife cut down a tin (which had something like pineapple in it) and put a stick through it to be a home made banger.

She chose well and picked a branch from the (god how I hate that plant) Bougainvillea in the back yard.

The thorn visible on the side of the branch is testimony to why I hated that plant (and then there is the spiders which seem to spontaneously generate in it) and the thickness (thinness) of the branch testimony to how tough it is (and also why I hated it).

My mother (God bless her well meaning heart) planted this nasty feral weed in the back yard and I've struggled to remove it for more than 15 years.

But I digress....

Its a bit difficult to see on this picture but there is a heart on the container as a decoration. Its difficult to see because I insisted it remain there and I covered the area with clear plastic tape to preserve the heart from coffee stains.

Wanting to share this with you today I removed the tape (which seems to have promoted some surface rust) to show you.

It proclaims what I already knew, that my coffee banger was made with love. I knew well that my darling Anita loved me, so it wasn't really needed for her to say that. But saying we loved each other to each other every day was something we did. It wasn't boring, it wasn't a hassle ... because we loved each other.

That she chose to invest some time and effort (instead of money) to make me a coffee banger rather than go and buy one is exactly part of the reason I loved her. Let me quote a Beatles song:

Say you don't need no diamond ring
And I'll be satisfied
Tell me that you want those kind of things
that money just can't buy
For I don't care too much for money
For money can't buy me love

Let me assure you that no money can buy me a better coffee banger.

But I did buy her a diamond ring, as her engagement ring, and the symbol to wear of my undying love for her. We spent many weeks looking far and wide (across many towns and a few countries) until we found a ring that was exactly what she wanted.

It had a softness of gold and a practicality that would allow her to wear it always without fear of the stone being damaged.

She is still wearing it today

My message today is "don't fukken worry about money, worry about the love you have". Treat it with the respect it deserves and foster it like the garden that grows the food that nourishes you.

Cos money can't buy you love.

Aspects of love

A question which often seems to go around is "what is love"

I dont want to try to rewrite the book there but perhaps just add some clarity on a point.

To me at least a significant part of love is trust, trust that extends beyond lending your material things. People often talk about giving of yourself, but what does that mean? Time? Energy?

To give the other person power over yourself is what I think its about.

As soon as you hear yourself say "you can't tell me what to do" it means you have not given that power to that person. So sharing power willingly with your spouse is to me a sign that you have a mutual love of depth.  Naturally that power should be in both people, you should also have that influence in your partners life too.

That you do not abuse this power is what keeps the love alive and growing. That you don't abuse the power is perhaps what others call "respect".

This has become part of what I call conscious knowledge (as opposed to unconscious knowledge) as I have reflected on what Anita and I had in our lives.

So perhaps a part of grieving is also learning.

I am glad that I am not learning along the lines of "you don't know what you have till its gone", for I can say that I did know well "what I had" and cherished it every day. So let me quote to you an important lyric from a song most will know:

love the one your with

and remember that the love you have is the most important thing you have.