Measure Your Life With Love

525,600 minutes…How do you measure a year in life?  Measure your life with love!

Love is a plethora of emotions that can smack you right upside the head and turn your world upside down in a matter of moments.

I was 14 years old, summer 1979-The year I transitioned from tomboy to girl as I walked down a Manhattan street with a Wire Hair Fox Terrier wrapped tightly around each wrist. This was the first time I felt the stinging of love like someone squeezed lemon in my eyes. It was love at first sight… A vision of loveliness staring at me from behind the window of a shoe store…Burgundy high heel Oxfords…I recall pushing my face up between my hands to get rid of the glare to get a better look and confirm that what my eyes saw was not deceiving. I cocked my head to check them out from all angles looking for flaws to gain trust. I looked down at my Chuck Taylor’s and felt a little guilt, but broke up with them nonetheless and my grandmothers shoe addiction started making sense.

Ruffus and Peppy ran along side me as I bolted home to tell my Dad about the love I had found. I sat him down at the dining room table to give my sales pitch because I thought it was going to be a problem. It was such a huge pivotal moment for me that I just naturally assumed it had to be for everyone. After all, love is a really tough sell right? So, I tell him this story about love and he just kinda stared at me like I had sprouted a Bonsai tree on top of my head. He called in the big guns, his girlfriend at the time (who later became my Step Mother) for reinforcement, thankfully. “Amy,” he yelled from the dining area, “can you come in here and handle this for me please?” I reiterated the story again for her ears while thinking swell, this is gonna suck, I gotta jump through hoops for love! I panicked, that 15 minutes felt like a lifetime. OMG! What if someone else walks by that window and sees my love? As fifty thousand thoughts flooded my head, I heard her say, let’s go grab them!

I dragged her down the street as quickly as I possibly could get her to walk and 10 minutes later walked in and they were on my feet. I looked up at Amy and she saw the tears well up in my eyes. She said, “what’s wrong?” They were too big. She smiled and said, “don’t worry, I know just how to take care of that.” She asked the woman working at the store to box them up and we were out the door. My heart was beating like a Bongo drum and I had a kick in my step as we walked back home.

The first day of my 8th grade year at a new private school, in my brand new Sassoon jeans and rockin’ it in my burgundy high-heeled Oxford’s (with 4 full length inserts placed inside and toilet paper wrapped around my toes). I was so blissfully happy with my new love, until I heard “WOW,” coming from my left side. I turned my head and there stood Dean smiling at me…”The Italian Stallion” (his nickname)…Gorgeous dark hair and chocolate-brown eyes and wearing the tightest, faded French Star Jeans that I have ever seen any male wear to present day. LOVE! I was smitten and stared awkwardly for a moment then turned my head from right to left again to try to figure out if that “wow” was for me. When I glanced over at him again, he was smiling and looking directly into my eyes…In just one brief moment, I loved again. In the blink of an eye Dean became my very first “real” boyfriend, until I was grounded and missed his soccer game. That summer I went to camp before moving and going back to public school and bam, Danny was the new love and over by the end of summer.

 

I am grateful, I have had so many moments to measure life with love, some short and some long, some that ended well and some, not so much. The most recent on May 31, 2013 with a new friend that looked me in the eyes and won my heart by saying, “you can always call me, when someone stands you up, I will always be there.” As I looked at him with warmth in my heart, I laughed and explained that I wasn’t stood up, he was running extremely late and I cancelled.  I left out the most important factor due to fear, the truth.  I cancelled because I knew I was meeting the wrong person and that the person I REALLY wanted to be with was at that moment sitting right in front of me, lovingly…I faltered then and several times since.

We all have fears, even trained professionals in this area such as myself. We are all human and we all at one time or another will inevitably screw it up. When those times happen we can make a choice to just let it go and keeping making the same mistakes over and over again or we can face the dragon with every fiber of our being to change from within and hope that it will be felt by others. If we choose to fight for ourselves and for those moments of love, we may not always get forgiveness or love that we seek in return from them, but we will always find the love of self and inner peace knowing that we did everything in our power to make it right by choosing love vs. fear.

Live life with no regrets and measure your life with LOVE.