introducing: love!

everywhere around me lately, there is love. it is an amazing time in my life and i want to reflect on it.

in a way, i almost don't want to notice it, not so much from fear it will fade but knowing it will likely change and go and hopefully come again. but this particular moment, is unprecedented.

terra is walking and talking and running and dancing and singing. today she worked on peddling a big wheel to modest success. it's hard to know to what degree she may feel love. for her, it is need. for her, it is instinct and selfishness and an utter lack of perspective. but from me, palpably flowing out of me in her direction, pouring in all truth though metaphorically, there is a deluge of love.

i am a realist and i embrace selfishness. philosophically, i consider selfishness the natural order and i think anything not truly good for you cannot possibly be selfishness and that is basically how i come to embrace this trait everyone wants to deny. and, i think this feeling i am experiencing, this state of mind i am in, this aura of invincible love flowing through me and enveloping me now is why we have children.

in fact, i'll proclaim it now and here for all to hear in my little public domain, i did it for me! i intend to be responsible by my daughter. i mean to provide for her in every way a father should. i expect to teach her much and prepare her for much and ultimately to trust her utterly. but i chose to have her in order to enrich my life. i decided in favor of children, (at what some consider an advanced age,) because i thought it would be good for me, and it is.

like most of us, my life has not been norman rockwell, all puppy dogs and christmas trees and sunday school. but as an adult i have more control over it than ever. i fail a lot. there are wide swaths of failure in my life, but i cannot spend my time beating myself up over those things, it is up to me to move forward in all positivity. i'm a creature of love and love, has rescued me.

raising terra is a lot of work, (and my fraction of it is not the largest one.) but working is homeostasis for humans and i have found terra's requirements conducive to my happiness, favorable for planting, nurturing and harvesting this pure love which is in me and surrounds me always today.

my relationship with my wife is ever improving. adjusting to marriage and children, (monogamy even,) represents cataclysmic shifts in one's life and so, it is difficult. but everyday i see faith and i getting better at working out our problems and differences, at managing our household, at loving. the best part of this is that we still have a long way to go. while there may be moments of regression ahead of us, i do not expect them to hold sway. i expect them to teach and to grant passage to greater heights in our coexistence.

i have in me an instinct to blush at my happiness, but there is no reason to shy away from this season of plenty.

my relationships with friends and family are like invisible jewels adorning my life. my brother has been released from his imprisonment and we speak on the phone often. tonight as i drove to my basketball game he told me he loves me as we hung up the phone. i am charmed.

even work, which still leaves much to be desired, is better than it has been in a long time. i struggle to understand the political aspects of work relationships and this is an aspect of life i have much to learn about still and much to work harder at to bring it into the harmony i am achieving elsewhere but this is a wholly acceptable life.

i have nothing to complain about today and so i sing it to anyone who may care to listen. i am writing daily. i am reading the collected works of ralph waldo emerson. if henry miller was correct in saying the aim of life should be to live it fully, i find myself joyfully in transit.

it is so good to know love, to appreciate its real meaning and to go forth unafraid of tomorrow because of the essence of my nature. i am a creature of love.

"Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself. To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving." -khalil gibran