Optimism – Charlie Jordan's Website

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…

Do you remember Bod?

When there weren’t endless channels of choice, we had just one programme at lunchtime each day for us kids. Well, that’s how I remember it.

Bagpuss & Pipkins were good, but my favourite was Bod. A triangle shaped person with their own theme tune. In fact every character had their own theme tune. Perhaps you can choose your own theme tune for today?

Anyway, Bod had mellow adventures, and once there was a snippet about trees losing their leaves as the seasons changed. (We didn’t have Mutant Ninja Turtles back then, or Zombie pizza games… )

I remember Aunt Flo was sad about the trees losing their leaves, but Bod offered an alternative way of looking at it. Without the trees losing their leaves, they wouldn’t be able to grow cherry blossom next Spring, or the Cherries in the summer after that.

The nature of ‘impermanence’, and how things are always changing was a simple yet profound insight for someone like me, who’d had something of a chaotic start to life, with 5 different families and homes in my first year alone. Perhaps a first glimpse of the Mindfulness traditions that would continue to be a foundation of my life.

As a grown up, I notice on a sunny Autumn day how you can see more of the blue sky with fewer leaves on the trees. Nearer winter, you can even see the birds more clearly on sparse branches. I practice this stubborn optimism to nudge out the winter blues!

It’s all about where you focus your attention.

I later discovered the creators of Bod, Joanne and Michael Cole had Taoist beliefs. Bod has a slight look of a monk, now I think about it. Serene face, bald head & a stubborn optimism.

As a kid growing up in Birmingham in the 70’s I’d not heard of Taoists or Buddhists, but this stuff made sense to me. Perhaps I was a ‘Bod-ist’ long before I set foot in a Buddhist temple years later. (Excuse the pun!)

Finding the wisdom in the everyday is where the gold in life is. It could be from Kids’ TV, a line in a favourite song or film, something your 6 year old says when the cat gets sick, or watching the dog relish every sniff on a morning walk, discovering the same park anew; all things can remind us of these simple but profound truths in life.

Seemingly endless huge changes in all of our lives over the last 18 months for sure, but hopefully if we look up, still some glimpses of blue skies to tide us through the colder months ahead.

Having changed the clocks last night, tonight’s earlier darkness will be noticeable. But we can keep our focus on the light, whether it’s candle lit pumpkins for Halloween, or scouring Youtube for a clip of Bod, perhaps that Cherry Tree episode…

Photo thanks to Unsplash, as our pumpkin is already roasted & half eaten!

Tag: Optimism

‘Never Love Anyone Tepidly’ & ‘Be More Daffodil.’

Autumn Wisdom from Children’s TV