[Reprinted with permission from LOST & FOUND ON LANA’I: The Trials & Transformation of One New Yorker Living in Paradise, 1995, by Marcia Zina Mager]

Love is such a controversial word. Ask a hundred different people and you'll get a hundred different meanings. Hollywood once told us, "Love is never having to say you're sorry." Religions say "God is Love." In the 60s, love was sharing everything, including your mate. Today, self-help books tell us that sometimes “love” can be enabling or co-dependent. The word is tossed around too easily. Turn on the news and you'll find people murdering for "love." Everywhere people are running from it or spending their lives running toward it.

Years ago, I wrote romance novels for a while. Back then, love was a simple formula. Boy meets girl, they fall in love and live happily ever after. But it's not that simple anymore. Love no longer fits into a neat little leather brief case carried by man and woman. Today love can mean that boy meets boy, girl meets girl, boy meets lonely extraterrestrial...

So on the heels of this internationally celebrated Valentine's Day, the question I'm pondering is...what is love? Where do you find it? Is it hunger and starry-eyed longing, like the media tells us in commercials and movies? When I look inside myself for an authentic nuts-n-bolt definition, I find only contradiction. Certainly, I'd like to think of myself as a totally loving person. I love Dennis. I love my family, my friends, my dog and cat. Yet in my life when I look at how I love others, I fall short in my eyes. I see my tremendous limitations. My own insecurities and childhood wounds have conspired at times to push me into the ring with people I care about, swinging with all my might. And often it's not me that goes down for the count.

So how do I find out what love really is? Whenever I find myself in this painful dilemma, my heart gently reminds me of what a wise friend once taught me. His name was Brian and he himself was an extremely wounded man. Yet he once had a powerful insight, a profound vision that perhaps is the most meaningful definition, for me, of what love is really all about.  Brian once told me he died on the operating table, after a brutal bike accident. He was one of those rare people who had a life-after-death experience. But instead of traveling through a long dark tunnel to arrive at a brightly lit spot with smiling relatives reaching toward him, he saw something much simpler. He saw himself as he was: a tall, soft spoken man with haunting blue eyes standing there cradling someone in his arms. But that someone was not a child. It was a full grown man. And much to his surprise, that man was himself. Brian had a vision of cradling Brian. From this fleeting glimpse, he taught me about compassion. Compassion for myself. Compassion for my limitations, for my mistakes, for my deepest, darkest wounds. If I did something I felt was terrible; if I had failed miserably in my own eyes, before I could finish my barrage of self-punishing comments, Brian would interrupt me with a simple question. "Can you have some compassion for yourself?" he would ask quietly. "Compassion for this woman called Marcia who's struggling with this terrible mistake? Can you care about her, right now, even though she's failed?"

Inevitably that gentle question would allow me to let out a long deep sigh. A kind of peace would settle around me. And I would look inside myself and discover it wasn't that hard to answer "yes." 

         That, to me, is what love is all about. Compassion for ourselves. Because it's only then -- when I'm willing to care about myself no matter what I've done or said or thought -- that I can lift my eyes to another human being and say, with authenticity and power, I love you.

         Happy Valentines Day.

It’s a new year. 2023. New beginnings! Fresh start! Brand new journal! Vision boards!

Be better. Be bigger. Be more. Do more. Reach your goals. Achieve your dreams!

Gosh, I’m exhausted…

What about just relaxing? What about just looking at the clouds? What about sitting under a tree? Dipping my tea bag? Listening to the weed whackers outside my window?

Why isn’t that enough?

I am so tired of the pressure to do more and be more and grow more. It’s an endless loop! The demands and expectations never seem to end. Every television commercial, every glossy magazine page, every social media ad. Everything in our culture keeps shouting:

GO GO GO!

DO DO DO!

BE BETTER THAN WHERE YOU ARE.

Why isn’t sitting in my living room petting my cat enough? Why isn’t carrying a shopping bag stuffed with groceries enough? Why isn’t waking up in the morning enough?

Every spiritual teacher under the sun preaches being present. Slowing down. Living in the Now. But it seems as if everything in us resists. Stillness is too quiet! Peace is too boring. The mind keeps shouting, Get up, move, do something IMPORTANT!!!

I once wrote a poem about it titled Call an Ambulance:

Stillness has gotten a bad rap.

The accusations are endless:

Uneventful.

Uninteresting.

Just too damn quiet!

Yet the hummingbird disappears

like a shooting star

right before my very eyes.

And the distant thunder,

like an atom bomb,

wakes up the whole sky.

If it got any more exciting

I’d keel over from a heart attack.

So here’s my spiritually correct/TV-infomercial-incorrect New Year’s resolution to myself for 2023…

RELAX!

For God’s sake, just relax! Just be who I am, right now, right here, puffy eyes, bad breath, stained tee shirt and all. 

Want to join me?

When I was five months pregnant, I woke up Christmas morning in Mililani, Oahu, to a beautiful, eighty-degree day and felt wildly depressed. We were still new to the islands and our families were five thousand miles away.

This isn’t Christmas, I barked at my husband. I’m from New York!  I need snow! I need cold! I need creamy hot chocolate and rosy-cheeked ice skaters gliding around Rockefeller Center! The last thing my hormonally challenged, burgeoning body wanted was hot tropical sun.

 Fortunately, my husband wasn’t subject to those mother-to-be mood swings. Calmly, he gathered some musty sweaters and led me to the car. Where are we going?!! I protested. Fifteen minutes later we pulled into the Ice Palace parking lot - an indoor ice rink , the only one in the entire state. This isn’t Rockefeller Center, I complained.  But the instant I stepped inside and laid eyes on the happy skaters and twinkling Christmas lights, my sweaty, swollen body let out a long, contented ahhhhh….

 So I ordered my hot chocolate.  But the young girl behind the counter informed me there wasn’t any; the hot chocolate machine was broken.  She must have seen my crestfallen expression, though, because she quickly offered to hand-stir some.  Gratefully, I accepted. So there I sat shivering, sipping my grainy hot chocolate, cuddled against my husband, our yet-to-be-born son cozy beneath layers of old sweaters and young love.

 That day turned into a cherished family ritual. Every single Christmas Day since (for almost a quarter of a century), after a long morning of unwrapping presents, my husband Dennis, our son Reyn, and I wrap ourselves in sweaters so we can slip and slide to our heart’s content inside the Ice Palace.  It may not be Rockefeller Center. But there’s an icy rink, cheerfully loud Christmas music, and they’ve repaired the hot chocolate machine so you can burn your tongue on a perfectly blended cupful of the stuff.

Gosh, what more can an irritable ex-New Yorker ask for?

P.S. That’s us celebrating Christmas Day, four years ago. The pandemic sadly shut the Ice Palace doors in 2020 but we’re overjoyed to learn that they are getting ready to reopen by Christmas Eve! I’ve already gathered my pile of musty old sweaters, frayed mittens, silk long johns, and that well-worn Santa hat. Grab a wool scarf and stop by! You’ll either find me on the ice (hopefully upright) or sipping some delicious, tongue-scalding hot chocolate!

Decades ago I lived in Manhattan. One miserable rainy morning I was hurrying to work.  It was rush hour. People sloshed through puddles, muttering under their breath, clutching black umbrellas shoved into the rain, like shields in battle.  As I weaved through the somber crowd, I noticed an outdoor fruit stand across the street. Everything was getting soaked, especially the fresh-cut flowers standing in white plastic buckets. 

I stopped in my tracks. Because I could swear those flowers were laughing. 

The harried New Yorkers raced by unaware. But the flowers in these buckets looked like they were giggling; heads tossed back, mouths wide open, delighting in the downpour.  There were irises, tulips, African daisies and roses, all smiling and shimmering in the morning rain. As the throngs of cheerless New Yorkers tromped by, I stared at those flowers because I realized they knew a great truth. Standing in the pouring rain, in their cheap plastic buckets, they were reveling in every glistening drop.  Unlike the frenetic humans too busy to notice, these flowers understood the secret to being happy:

Appreciate everything. Even the downpour.

That image has stayed with me for more than a quarter century because those flowers showed me, in the simplest way, what gratitude is really about. The willingness to praise.

I know being grateful often isn’t easy, especially when you bounce checks, or wake up with a fever, or say good-bye to a dear friend, or lose your job. 

But I also know that practicing gratitude and appreciation and praise is the fundamental difference between a truly happy life and a miserable one, no matter what your circumstances. 

So ponder that the next time you get stuck in a downpour. Who knows? You might find yourself singin’ in the rain…