Never Love Anyone Tepidly…
The words I heard as I switched on the radio the other day.
I like that rule. ‘Never Love Anyone Tepidly’. We can expand this to ‘Never Love Anyone or Anything Tepidly’.
Whoever or whatever you love, don’t do it half heartedly, just go for it!
You love trees? Go walk in the park as often as possible and gaze adoringly at the shapes & structures of every tree you encounter, in utter bliss. Read books about them and count the leaves on a tree one sunny afternoon, as the poet Mary Oliver once mentioned doing…
You love a mischievous three year old niece or grandchild? Enjoy the picture books & world of wiggling worms & lego, giggling often and playing for hours.
Love wholeheartedly those friends you’ve known for years. You may have seen each other through poodle home perms, heartbreak, illness, the usual dramas and crises that can bring us to our knees. They put the kettle on, make a sandwich and gently remind us that someone does care, and that Robert Frost was right, life does goes on.
Eventually.
To love a partner through the years won’t always be easy, there will be times when they are your favourite person in the universe, or at times they might drive you round the bend, just as you might irritate them…..
Mostly it’s a good thing to do with our time, to love. But let’s not risk loving ‘tepidly’. That could be a greater risk than the risk of heartbreak or loss.
Even when we’ve lost someone, we don’t lose that love, it just continues in a different form. Love is that invisible thread that unites us like ‘a giant wonky cobweb!’ Not the most poetic phrase, but it came from an adorable seven year old in a poetry session I ran, and I thought it should be shared.
February brings a commercial focus on ‘romantic love’ for Valentine’s day, but there are so many more types of Love than just that. Don’t forget to love yourself, as well.
Don’t love yourself tepidly, but with enthusiasm, with a wholehearted sense of how ridiculous, wonderful & amazing you are, you have been and you will continue to be.
You’re not perfect, neither am I or anyone else reading these words. Thankfully! That would be way too much pressure, but we can imperfectly bumble along and love each other and the world we inhabit. That’s a gentle aim for February.
There are tiny snowdrops bowing their heads, and daffodil shoots forcing their way above the ground in search of Winter sunlight in the UK. They have confidence there will be a Spring and they’re longing to show off their bold yellow trumpets.
Let’s assume daffodils love themselves, and not tepidly.
Be more daffodil!
Enjoy loving yourself & other people and things in the world this month, and notice when you love fully, not tepidly, and appreciate that quality of paying attention. I hope you also feel loved in return, and treasure that feeling.
I’ve just researched the voice on the radio who said, ‘Never love anyone tepidly’. It’s Catherine Newman, author of a book called ‘We all want impossible things.”
I’ll message her to say how brilliant her words were, as they’ve stayed with me for the last few days. She volunteers at a hospice, a place where each moment of everyday life becomes such a precious thing to be treasured.
Marie Curie hospices in the UK have the daffodil as their symbol. Did you know a daffodil field can bloom for a phenomenal 50 yrs? So the bulbs we chuck in the garden in a spirit of optimism may be cheering people up for decades.
In Japan daffodils symbolise joy and in France they represent Hope. All good things for us to keep hold of, as we navigate February. And some supermarkets have bunches of daffs for £1, which is the perfect way to cheer up a friend who might struggling this week.
This morning a group of lovely writers joined my Mindfulness Zoom session where we wrote about love in all sorts of different ways… from worms & daffodils to Burt Bacharach. We loved it all, and not tepidly!
The irony as I type this, of a ‘tepid’ cup of tea I forgot about. Just off to microwave it… and sending you the optimism of the daffodil for your February, and a biscuit for your tea…