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Category: Understanding Love

The Checklist That Makes Me Feel Like I *Actually* Visited A Place

Published on April 24, 2023

Below is my highly refined checklist of what makes me feel like I actually visited a place when I travel to visit a place. Because as some of you may relate, there have been plenty of times when I visited a place, did some things, left, and felt like I didn’t really visit the place at all. The list below is my unique concoction of things that act as an antidote to that feeling.

In no particular order:

  • One local bookstore
  • One quaint coffee shop
  • One offbeat nature path
  • One unique-to-the-area attraction
  • One conversation with a stranger
  • One conversation with a local friend (if applicable)

…How about you? What makes you feel like you’ve actually visited a place when you visit a place? I’d love to hear in a reply.

P.s. This was my vacation reflection from Monday, April 24, 2023.

The In-Between Time

Published on April 8, 2023

Before deep inner work can begin, an empty block of time—filled with nothing at all—needs to be present.

What I’m also learning, while visiting family out of town, is that having an empty block of time—filled with nothing at all—is a great strategy for allowing deep inter-relational work to begin.

Having structured activities, sightseeing adventures/tours, and meals planned together is undoubtedly great. But, it seems to me that it is in the in-between time—in the moments where nothing is happening at all—where all the magic happens.

Warmth and Light

Published on March 30, 2023

We are at our best when we’re radiating the warmth of love. Not towards one person, per se, but towards all of life.

And that warmth, as mentioned yesterday, is generally a composition of patience, kindness, joy, forgiveness, and gratitude.

Which means, a great question to consider as you go about your day and handle tasks, requests, surprises, confrontations, challenges, manipulations, curveballs, frustrations, adversities, irritations, unmet expectations, etc…

How can I use this or how can I respond to that in a way where it feeds the fire of my love (aka my patience, kindness, joy, forgiveness, and gratitude)?

Because if you’re unable to find a way to have it do either of those things… then the byproduct will be a more blocked love. It’s a binary path. We’re either feeding the fire of our love or blocking it.

And unless we’re finding ways to constantly feed those inner flames… it will slowly cool, fade, and eventually suffocate. And that’s the last thing we need in this already cold, harsh world.

What we need are more people who have found ways to perform at their best and can serve as brilliant sources of warmth and light—not just for themselves… but for us all.

P.s. This became the introduction for: An Exercise In Forgiveness—To Help You Let Go Of Anger and Find Peace

What Is Love?

Published on March 29, 2023

Love is an unconditional warmth that radiates outwards from a person’s center towards all other beings. More specifically, a warmth that’s really just a majestic composition of patience, kindness, joy, forgiveness, and gratitude. Different people are made up of different compositions, but each unique composition has the same outward radiating result.

Love is not selective. Love brings warmth even to those who are cold, impatient, rude, upset, angry, and/or ungrateful. Which isn’t to say we accept, ignore, or make it our mission to change these behaviors. It’s merely to say, as the backyard fire pit warms anyone and everyone who climbs near… so, too, will love warm anyone and everyone who steps near.

What you see when people radiate warmth towards some, but act ice cold towards others is blocked love. When too many layers of cold, corrupt, malevolent, manipulative, hateful, “un-burnable” actions/circumstances gets piled on top of a person’s innate love… they’re only able to partially radiate warmth on sides where there are unblocked openings. And cold towards all is a sign of a completely smothered love.

What you see when two people devote their love specifically towards each other isn’t selective love per se. What you’re seeing are two fires who enjoy each other’s warmth so much that they decide to combine to create a bonfire. This magnifies the warmth that either individual could radiate alone and creates a combined effect that (unconditionally) warms at scale.

When a combining of fires has the opposite effect (and cools), you know it isn’t a love that’s meant to be. Love shouldn’t be something that only makes one or two of us warmer… love is something that should warm us ALL.

There’s More To The Story

Published on March 26, 2023

I had an incredibly sobering moment today on the basketball court.

While playing with 12 other guys and in the midst of non-stop madness consisting of dribbling, shooting, jumping, sprinting, cutting, grunting, picking, rolling, fouling, falling, etc… and in a happenstance moment where time slowed down to a crawl for a brief moment…

I saw, hidden behind one of the player’s ears and peaking out just ever so slightly from his sweaty, overlaying hair… a “;” tattoo.

Now, for those who aren’t familiar, the people who generally get a semi-colon tattoo are suicide survivors. Its meaning is pulled from the dictionary definition of a semi-colon and essentially means there’s more to the story.

Looking at this dude… and in the midst of a chaotic, enjoyable, flow-state kind of time… I never would have known.

And it was a sobering reminder that everyone we meet is living a life as rich and as complicated as we are who are oftentimes facing battles we know nothing about looking at their outward appearance.

…It was a sobering reminder to be kind; to initiate connection, and to try not to judge.

And I hope it might be for you, too.

P.s. 101 Acts of Kindness To Help Recalibrate The World.

Becoming More Connected To Life

Published on March 24, 2023

Most of what we do every day is work for others, digitally lurk in the background of other people’s lives, and consume other people’s content… all of which provides no meaningful two-way connection to either others or ourselves.

This is why so many of us feel so disconnected in the age of connection.

What brings us closer to people isn’t doing work for them, lurking, or consuming one directional content… what brings us closer to people is:

  • Meals spent together
  • Rich conversational exchange
  • Adventures embarked on together
  • Activities/ Hobbies enjoyed together
  • Long car rides/ walks in nature together
  • Chats at a coffee shop/ by fireside together
  • Projects/ art/ problem-solving done together
  • And so on…

And what brings us closer to ourselves is everything listed above… only by and for ourselves.

So, if you’re feeling disconnected and lonely, make it a goal to take the initiative on one of the above mentioned endeavors (for both others and for yourself) and continue to do so regularly.

Waiting for others to take the initiative only perpetuates that disconnected feeling and strips you of the control you have over your life situation.

I promise, if you can find ways to add even just one of the above-mentioned ideas into your days or weeks… you’ll slowly, slowly, start to feel more and more connected to this life.

P.s. The next book I’ll be uploading quotes from is Make Your Bed by Admiral William H. McRaven. If you’d like to read along… info, links, and such can be found here ➜

“Love Yourself”

Published on March 19, 2023

Saying to someone “love yourself” is about as helpful as saying to someone “become healthy.”

Like becoming healthy, self-love is a multi-faceted challenge that requires careful introspection, a profound determination or desire, and an extensive life-long commitment—it isn’t something that is just “fixed.”

Maybe, instead of telling people to arbitrarily love themselves, we can be an example for them or encourage them to do more of the things where the byproduct is self-love.

Things like exercise, healthy eating, meditating, reading, writing, therapy, joining supportive and uplifting communities, etc.

When I think back to the people who have inspired me the most in my life… I think of the ones who were modeling a way of life that I wanted to live… not merely talking about one.

So, before you go telling other people to love themselves… consider the idea that loving yourself fully might be the most impactful thing you might ever do for them anyhow.

Not to mention, of course, that the byproduct of this method is that you get to (re)focus your energy into loving yourself fully—which is the ultimate win in-and-of itself.

P.s. MoveMe Quotes got an update. I increased the font size/ readability, removed a bunch of unnecessary meta text, refreshed the look of the blog pages and articles, and more… enjoy :)