Be (in love)

For B, who gets it.
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As I was leaving for the airport in Oklahoma City last week, my sister handed me a cloth pouch with these words printed on it:

Be in love with your life. Every minute of it. -Jack Kerouac

I couldn't help the mental eye roll that immediately followed as these kinds of slogans make me nuts. It's impossible to love every minute of your life, much less to live with the pressure to do so.

But I started playing with the phrase as the kids and I boarded the plane.
Be in love became Be (in love)... Be in a state of love. Lead with loving intention. Lead with a being of love, which feels wholly different than expecting your life to have the rapturous quality of being in love with something. Holding yourself in a state of love means that you can hurdle things as they come, that you can deflect the negative and live in truth, that resting in a place of love removes you from being in the place of fear. Being in love with your life is to look at the world with an expectation. Being (in love) means that no matter what comes your way, you are held in a safe state of your own choosing.

Choosing to Be (in love) with your life is not a simple task. It requires you to let things go, which often means letting go of people, old wounds, sadness and fear. It means holding yourself to the promise of possibility. It breaks a lot of old patterns. For someone like me, it's getting past the resistance to the over-positive that smacks of saccharine or delusion. It's understanding what existing in a state of love is about. For real.