Remembering To Live And Love With Passion

We gain many skills and understandings as we get older like wisdom and self-assurance.  But we also loose such qualities as our ability to take risks and expose ourselves and be vulnerable. And that is a pity.

We think twice about pursuing a relationship with someone who we feel passionate about because we are afraid of where our feelings might take us.  And even worse, what if it doesn’t work out?

Or we may be paralyzed to pursue work that we really care about because of again “what if it doesn’t work?”

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Live Your Passion

There are no big secrets to making your dreams come true and doing what you’re passionate about. But there are three ingredients found in every dream realized. They are:

• The belief in yourself and in your dream
• A heaping dose of passion and imagination
• A lot of hard work

Take the following steps toward pursuing what your are passionate about:

• Step 1: Identify your passion
• Step 2: Create a mission statement
• Step 3: Write a step-by-step plan to achieve your mission statement
• Step 4: Put your plan into action

…Continued

The Difference Between Love And Obsession

In my never ending web searches for topics to read I came across the article by Deborah Leigh Ketner (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/42453) about a subject I know a lot about: the difference between love and obsession.

I have truly loved two men in my life.  One when I was fourteen years old (innocent love) and the other my husband, who passed away in 2008 (mature and supportive love).  In between those two relationships, I dated many men but I either was not really interested in them or they were relationships of obsession.

Let me write first about my two genuine loves.  I met Tau (remember I’m from Brazil) when I was thirteen.  We stayed together until I was eighteen.  In those years we traveled and learned about relationship through loving each other.  It was an absolutely trusting, and innocent relationship, neither one of us had much history and we were discovering life together.  Everything was new, exciting and we were there for each other.

When I met my husband, I had plenty of history.  I had also accumulated a lot of heavy baggage but there was also plenty of wisdom which I had picked up along the way.  It was this wisdom that allowed me to really love and be loved.

I had learned that when we NEED someone in order to exist and our body aches when that person is not around, it is not love, it is obsession.  It is about us thinking a particular person has the power to rescue us.  And we want to be rescued because we don’t trust our own ability to take care of and provide ourselves with a rich life.

Loving someone means we don’t NEED them but instead we want to share our lives with them and most importantly we want to support them on their life journey.  That means giving them the foundation to let them go and be whatever is going to allow our loved ones to grow as people and experience life.  There is a huge difference from “you have to stay with me no matter what” or “you can’t do this to me” to “I’m here loving you; go try out life”.

In obsessive relationships it is all about us not the other person.   In a strange way, even though these relationships are all about us, we have no power.  By NEEDING someone we give our power away and sometimes the recipients can be quite cruel.  It is a game that gets set up; I give you my life and you abuse it because the truth is I’m needy and you resent me.

Love happens easily and naturally.  No games. Two people meet and they are ready to journey together.  No imprisonments or psychologically empty deals.  It is simply: I love you and I want the best for you.  You love me and you want the best for me. That’s real love.

So if you truly want to experience a deep and loving relationship start by loving yourself.  That is the only way you’ll be able to meet someone and share love and life without being needy or always being scared if that person leaves your world will crumble.  Because that is not love that is obsession.

Blah, Blah, Blah

I haven’t had much to talk about lately.  I was in Brazil working on a film for a few weeks and have just come back.

December 13th was my birthday and soon it will be Christmas and New Years.  I don’t have any major plans and would normally be looking forward to hanging with the dogs and watching all the films that come to my door – courtesy of being a member of the Producers Guild of America –  except that I’m feeling Blah.

Let me define Blah.  Blah is when I can’t really complain about anything but don’t have much energy.  Blah is when I’m lacking passion and everything is beige.   Nothing wrong with the color but between you and me, beige is just not exciting.

Am I feeling blah because I have been trying to fulfill all these tasks that I have set myself up to finish before the end of the year?  Make money, write a book, produce a film, write a blog, be good, be descent.   Or am I feeling blah because I’m unconsciously putting on a lid on my feelings as not to have them overflow?  Probably a bit of both.

I brought back a puppy with me from Brazil.  Shai (the new puppy) was a good source of companionship and a receptacle of love for me while I was in Rio de Janeiro but even Shai can’t now keep the blah away.

I’m thinking maybe I need to exercise more.  Sweating and getting a shot of endorphins might help with the blah.  I might even get a Thai massage – nothing like having a person walking and elbowing you to get you going and hopefully help you get hid of the blah.

Maybe what I really need is a bit of dating and dreaming and a bit of hugging and touching.  But how do I do that?  Internet dating?  Can’t hack it.  Too much work and too much exposure.  Looking for Mr. Goodbar?  I’ve never been very good about meeting strangers plus it can be too risky. Friends?  It would be great except that we would have to look at each other in the morning and acknowledge a different level of intimacy that could jeopardize the friendship.  So nope, couldn’t do it.

I wish there was a pill for blah; one that I could walk into a drugstore and tell the pharmacist that I had blah and then wait while he put little white pills into an orange or blue jar.

I think I have a lot of blah ahead of me but I promise if I find a cure I will share as I don’t believe I’m the only blah sufferer around.

It is the season for giving so I have to try my best not to spread my blah around and to not get myself into a situation so as to push my blah away.  Chaos can always distract me from my blah but as I have experienced before it is only temporary and the price is almost always too high.

This whole blah dissertation makes me think of Buddhism which if taken at face value promotes the idea of not reacting one way or another to anything, so the highs are not so high and the lows not so low.  It sounds a bit like blah but I know that is not what Buddhism supports.  I think they actually are more into making one’s existence the center of one’s life so the world doesn’t have such a hold on us.

Of course the demand to be jolly for birthday, Christmas and New Years is of no help to a blah cure.   So I have just decided to take a warm shower and then ride my bike before my blah blah blah sends me into a blah coma.

And please do me a favor.  If you know what to do about blah send me an email or post it on my facebook page or send me a tweet.

P.S.  While having the hot water run over my body I thought that blah is probably the result of not enough stimulus.  We live in a world that everything runs fast and we are bombarded by information and requests.  Our systems are on the go and sometimes when we slow down we go into withdrawal.  So I’m going to breathe deeply and slow down even more and I’m going to connect with the root that keeps me grounded in this planet, my body, and I’m going to observe and appreciate what surrounds me and I know by New Years blah will be just a thing of 2009.

Passion

Passion is the most important ingredient in life.  I am not just referring to passion between two people but am talking about fun and enjoying ourselves which results in wanting to do things with energy, with passion.

Unfortunately today’s way of living ends up usurping any passion out of our lives as most of us are always in a hurry.  We have to get up early to work or take care of kids.  We spend our days performing tasks and running from one place to another and at night we try to catch up with things that were left undone from the day; so no wonder most of us are often tired and lacking motivation.

Living fast to keep ourselves afloat often ends up in boredom.  Passion, the exact opposite of boredom, needs space to flourish and needs daily feeding.

We live in a society that quantity has replaced quality.  How many of us ask ourselves this question: “Have I produced enough today?”  But how many of us ask: “Did I have enough quality time today?  Did I feed my passion?”

Creating space for passion, the fuel of life, does not have to be complicated.  We don’t need to travel expensively, have wild sex or eat at the most expensive restaurant in town to feed our passion.  What we need to do is to slow down enough and have the time to check in with ourselves.  To close our eyes, take a deep breath and ask ourselves how we are doing and what is it that we need.  When we do that we become more in tune with ourselves and we can be our own givers of the things that make us smile; be that a glass of wine, a walk in the park, a nice meal, a massage, or just relaxing while listening to music.  Whatever it is, if we slow down we’ll know how to provide.

We are not machines; we are complicated beings full of feelings and thoughts.  Crossing tasks off our “to do” lists non-stop only create lives without pizzazz and who wants that?  Especially because when we get bored we may opt for creating havoc in our surroundings just to feel something and that is not passion; it is self destruction.

So I’m working on checking in with myself and making sure I’m feeding my “soul” to have enough passion to have a life well lived.

I Feel Nasty

I live in Los Angeles, the car capital of the country where we worship our cars.  Some of us have no money for anything but we have our shinning cars.  As we drive by each other in our shiny cars we have no idea of the dramas playing out in each one of the cars we pass by.

Last night, for some reason, before going out to meet a friend I decided to pull out my unused make up kits. Without really knowing what I was doing, even though I’m way past the age of not knowing what to do, I started putting dark colors around my eyes.  I was going for a mysterious, dangerous look but mostly ended up with black all over my face and sink. 

After cleaning my face and succeeding at keep the eye shadow mostly around my eyes, I put on my long earrings and I looked in the mirror and felt hot and I felt sexy and I felt nasty. 

And I thought back to the time before I had met Chris, to the time I was afraid of my own feelings and thoughts to the time my womanhood my sexuality got me in trouble and often made me feel guilty.  And I thought about the friendships I left behind so I could leave the troubles there as well.

And I drove to pick up a girlfriend and as she got in the car I told her that I was going to be kissing a man that night.  She offered me a dollar but I said she should do better than that, at least a twenty.  And as I said those words I realized I wasn’t going to go through with it.  I wanted to shake things up to be daring.  I wanted to turn a page.  I wanted to move on but the truth is I am not ready yet.  The future is still the future and the past is still the present.

I understand grief has its own time and process.  I’m always in a hurry wanting things to happen now, but in the same way that I fell in love with Chris by getting to know him so is my process of living without him – a day at a time. 

I know the good, respecting, conscientious Deborah lives side by side with the sexy, provocative, playful Deborah.  The key is to learn how to balance all sides as I try to honor my whole being. Good Saturday.