Article by Make The Days Count Contributor Marie Monroe

 

During the recent holiday season I was inspired by a child’s remark that he was making his New Year’s revolutions.  He mistakenly, but wonderfully, referred to them not as resolutions but as revolutions.  Since that time, and with much meditation upon his misnomer, I have explored his refreshing approach in my own new year.  I find, now some weeks into the start of a new life-chapter, that I am going strong with this new perspective. 

 

One of the ways I have approached this season of beginnings is to go deeper than my usual annual fresh start.  I have focused more upon the nature that surrounds me and what it is teaching me through its cycles.  I have also focused more on the traditional milestones of my culture’s year and its holidays … how one transitions with a natural flow into the next.

 

The birth of new hope and the dawning of new light at Christmas was a wonderful way of doing both:  keeping my eye on nature as well as the culture that surrounds me and sustains me.  I find now, as that season recedes, that the Christmas birth is giving way to meditations on love as we approach yet another cultural and seasonal milestone, Valentine’s Day.

 

Valentines

The stores are now bursting with expressions of love … teddy bears are prepared to carry plush hearts and flowers to their new owners.  Candies are emblazoned with sweet nothings ready for schoolchildren to share with one another.  Chocolates are cradled in their heart-shaped boxes of romance.  Balloons have pulled in their roundness to float overhead in their own versions of Cupid’s target …

 

The card racks remind me of the many versions of human love, its many manifestations and possibilities.  I sort through them, tantalized by the shiny surfaces, the ornate scripts, the seemingly endless palettes of reds and pinks … my artist’s mind notes how even the colors are changing as our milestones shift.  I realize that the red and green of new birth is now shifting to the warmer end of those complementary colors.  Hmmm … warmth!

 

At my drugstore, I stand there enthralled with this visual feast.  Commercialism?  Oh yes, but a sweet one … one that’s taking me beyond the seemingly superficial meanings of these traditional symbols and this tradition itself.  Giving tokens of love to those we love.  Giving tokens of different types of love … having a lengthy menu of types of love to choose from so that everyone dear to us in any way can be reminded:  You Are Loved.

 

My Traditions as a Child

As a child I had my own Valentine traditions.  I would scour the house for the perfect “mailbox” … some box I could cut a mail slot into and cover in aluminum foil (so shiny and tactile, glistening with love).  Then I would fold my precious red and pink papers in half to cut out the perfect hearts to decorate my mailbox.  I put my name on it so the love postman would know where to deliver my love.  I wanted to be sure the love arrived safely and accurately. 

 

Then I waited expectantly for my deliveries.  I carried my box to school for my schoolmate’s and teacher’s deliveries. I sat it around the house waiting for deposits and I checked it often, shaking and listening or peeking inside…

 

Before that grand day, however, I’d carefully choose my own greetings of love.  What ‘tines would I send this year in my excited, ‘lazy,’ childhood speech?  One box of children’s Valentines … that was the allotment.  And oh what deliberation it took to narrow the options!: 

 

was the one teacher card in this set (the biggest, proclaiming For My Teacher) …

was it nice enough?  

was it big enough?

the images … would boys make fun of the ones I gave them?

was there a set that said I care about you, my male friend, in a like way, not a like-like way?  could the same set accommodate my love for my female friends?  

 

Ken and Barbies, Superman and Cowboys

At 7 and 8 and 9, these things mattered! Would my girlfriends - the friends I loved most at that time in my life - would they like their Valentines if I chose a pack in my childlike attempts to accommodate both genders?

 

What decisions!

 

No Barbies!  We girls loved Barbie and boys would torture us for it.  Sometimes they tried to snatch our precious Barbies and torture them, too!  No, as beautiful as Barbie was, as tantalizing as her pinks were … no, no Barbies, not with just an allowance for one pack of ‘tines.

 

No GI Joes!  No, not as much as the boys loved them.  Not as much as they’d tease me not at all if I appeased them with their own version of Barbie-love.  But how, with permission for only one box of ‘tines could I ward off boys at the expense of giving my girlfriends a GI Joe?  Although, admittedly, and somewhat surreptiously, some of us would snatch a GI Joe when we snapped out of Barbie-mania and had the opportunity.  Yes, not only GI Joe, but Superman and Batman and cowboys … hmmm.

 

Superman!  Everybody loves Superman!  Cowboys!  Everybody loves cowboys!

 

And so it went.

 

Sweet, sweet red and pink and silvery memories … an early practice of love … of honoring love, of giving and receiving love.

 

A Child of God

I’ve taught many children to make those mailboxes of love over the years.  I still scour around for good boxes and a willing child, but some things have changed in those traditions.  I still buy those little boxed sets of children’s ‘tines, but now I might get two or three or five!  And now I give the special, big Teacher cards to my mentors … to Arthur, a wise and humble psychiatrist, who taught me to love our irascible and most challenging, sometimes combative-in-their-pain, patients. 

 

Arthur said one quiet thing one day in a meeting of therapists that flew straight into my heart as sure and true as any of Cupid’s arrows.  A frustrated, colleague beleaguered by the chronic verbal abuse of a man in terrible emotional pain, finally exclaimed, “Oh, Arthur, why do we continue to tolerate this”?  And Arthur said very quietly, very powerfully, “Because he is a child of God, I suppose.” 

 

That one very simple, softly spoken statement helped her regain perspective.  It bolstered her flagging spirit and she went on to help her patient, able to separate his pain from who he was.  Arthur taught me more than how to practice my profession with his ‘small’ statement that day.  He taught me how to be a better human being in all of my affairs.

 

So now, I choose a boxed set of children’s Valentines with an eye for the perfect teacher card for Arthur because he has taught me with one statement, and years of behavior, about unconditional love in the face of adversity, even rejection and hatred.

 

And for my colleague next door, a genuine and gifted rascal, who teases me in ways reminiscent of the Barbie/GI Joe wars, I will choose a Barbie or a Hannah Montana or a Bratz ‘tine to deliver promptly on the morning of our Valentine’s Day.  He appreciates these ‘girl’ Valentines.  He grins.  He fusses. He tacks them up in a place of honor. He knows I am honoring our sibling, childlike play that we both treasure so much in our work-a-day lives.  He understands that this kind of love sustains us in the “trenches” of hard work.

 

So, the New Year Revolutions continue.  I am doing better with these this year than I’ve done with those of previous years.  I am keeping an eye on what these changing times of my calendar mean for me internally, not in body size or in commitments to keep a cleaner desk.

 

Yes, I’d like to drop some weight and yes, a daily habit of cleaning my desk would make my life simpler, but I am happier this go round as I remember what the birth of a savior does for us.  It teaches us love, all kinds of love.

 

Loving the people who surround me, in whatever way they do surround me, is a salvation in its own right.  Feeling these many types of love:  love for teachers and mentors, love for colleagues, love for patients, love for children, romantic love, platonic love, motherly love, sisterly love, the love of color, the love of celebration and the love of love itself.

 

What a glorious mailbox full of shakable and hear-able love I already have, even though I’ve yet to make my foil and paper receptacle, or receive any ‘tines this year.   I can’t wait to pick out my Valentines!  I think I need five boxes this year…

 

And I can’t wait to receive more reminders of how much I am already loved.

 

 “Give love and unconditional acceptance to those you encounter, and notice what happens.”
-Wayne Dyer

 

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