Love is Important

     There has been so much death and destruction in the world lately that it makes one think about what is important in life. Some people pontificate about living life to the fullest because every day might be their last. Interesting, but kind of depressing . If one has to go to work everyday or has responsibilities it is hard to really do that. And what about sleeping? Does one really have time to sleep when living like each day is one's last day?
      Fortunately I have another answer. I think that its important to spend time with one's loved ones and to make sure that they know how much one cares about them. I think one should also spend as much time as one can doing what one enjoys. We don't have control over everything, but these things we can do.
       Life is short, but it is possible to make it count.

     

Kippalive - Can You Feel The Simcha

     I really love this video. I love how there are older and younger couples featured.

What it all means

     I used to have a friend who wished she did  not want to get married because then  she would not feel bad that she was single.  I also know someone who worries that  her sick friend's daughter is too dependent on her mother. She feels she should not spend so much time with her mother because she feels it will be harder for her when her mother passes.
      I think that the purpose of life is to strive for something even though one may not get it and even if it hurts when one does not achieve one's goals. I may not find a spouse, but then again maybe I will and I would definitely regret not trying to find one more than the pain I am going through trying to find my bashert.
      Losing a loved one is always painful whether one spends a lot of time with them or little time with them. One is not going to escape missing them or wishing they were there to to help one navigate life when they are gone. I think that my friend means well when she fears her friend's daughter will be devastated when her mother passes on , but the daughter will feel distraught and alone when her mother dies no matter what . She would also feel even worse if she does not spend every moment with her now when she is alive.
      Knowing life is finite does not mean that one should avoid  people and things in life because they are finite, it means one should love and appreciate everyone one holds dear because we have a limited time to spend with them. Every moment is precious.

      

Love and the Media

When I first heard this song it reminded me of a lot of other love songs because there are so many phrases from other love songs I have heard over the years. It also is so true, People are always looking for a love that is like in the movies , a book or even a cliched love song. That said, its still an awesome song.

Love is....

     I don't know if its age or just co-incidence , but I have a lot of friends who are in avelus for the loss of a parent. I unfortunately have been in their shoes and I know how tough it is to go through. It is as if a part of you is being ripped from you . It does not matter if one was close with one's parent or not, it just feels that way to have a parent pass away. I am sad for my friends who are now going through this because I know that it really takes at least a year of mourning until things get better. It also reminds me to appreciate my mom and other close relatives and friends. It is so important to let people , especially older relatives know how much you love  and appreciate them while they are around.

more funerals than weddings

     Sometimes people in movies attend weddings to meet members of the opposite sex ala The Wedding Crashers . Other times people go to funerals to meet members of the opposite sex. So far I have been more successful meeting men at weddings than at funerals/shiva.  I guess that's good. Unfortunately I know more people sitting shiva than having weddings. This my friends is the essence of the shidduch crisis. There are not enough weddings happening and more people are dying without facilitiating  love connections for grieving singles.

mazal

lately i have noticed that when i hear of couples marrying i have been genuinely happy for them. its not that i was not happy for others mazal before, but my joy from them was not complete. i was happy for them but still a little sad for myself. this scares me a bit because i have always thought that if you feel a little envy for others it can be motivating. it means one has not given up . it means one has not fully accepted one's single state. or does it? is it possible to be genuinely happy for others without meaning one has given up? i don't think that i have given up. but i have felt genuine joy for others who have found love. i am not fool enough to think that if one can be happy for others who get married that it will make me suddenly find love. there is no secret magic formula. that much i do know.

holidays and families

holidays always make me think about family and that i actually have a mother and siblings who love me. when you live far away from your family you forget that there actually people out there that really care about you. i have friends and yes they are like family, but they are the family a person earns. parents and siblings are the family you have because you were born into them and they care for you anyway. they are the people who have known you most of your life and their lives. its hard to be away from them because there really isn't anyone who can replace them.  its important to love and appreciate them and remember that  they are rooting for you even when they aren't physically near.

love etc...

i was all set to see the serious movie crime after crime about an abused woman who kills her husband in self defense and ends up in jail and then almost 20 years later the case was reopened  and she ends up having a frum lawyer defend her. it was raining today. the fact that it was a rainy day really depressed me, so i decided to see a lighter film. i ended up seeing love etc.
love etc chronicles five love situations in new york city. i would call them love situations instead of couples because not everyone ends up part of a couple and not all of the love documented is couple love.
the first love situation is a first generation american indian couple. we see them before during and after their wedding. though i've never been married i believe that they were portrayed more realistically than any hollywood couple on the silver screen.
the second love situation was  a divorced dad with full custody of his two kids. while he was a hands on dad, and quite buff i might add, he didn't do as well as one might think with the ladies.
the third love situation was the first love of a high school couple.
the fourth love was an elderly jewish couple named al and marian. they have been married 48-49 years. al is , sit down folks, ten years younger than marian. marian had kids from a former marriage when she married al. in about 1960. now they are 79 and 89.
the last love situation was a gay man who wanted to have a child so badly that he found an egg donor and a surrogate and had twins. it was not shocking to me at  all that a gay man would want to be a parent. some gay men have feminine qualities that would make them a good father/mother to a child. i found this storyline intriguing on several levels. of course his actual story was fascinating, but it also made me think. a lot of women go it alone and have kids or adopt kids on their own when they fear they will never meet a man to have a child with. straight men get squeamish when a women is too gung ho on marriage and feel like they are only being loved for their donation to the possibility of a future child . hmm .... on the other hand many men will reject thirty or forty something women because they think they are too "old " to have a kid, but no one bats an eye at this. these men certainly are only looking at these younger women  only for their wombs and baby making abilities. come to think of it except for one lone frum male blogger whose name and blog name escapes me  who wrote about hiring a surrogate to have his baby i have never heard of any straight men doing this. why don't they? it would take a lot of the pressure off of dating for them. there would be less fifty year old men trying to unsuccessfully date under 35 year old (wombs) women and they would have children. women have taken charge of their parenthood. why haven't men? or is this fantasy of finding a much younger woman to have kids with just an excuse not to get married? hmm... i really have no answers just lots of think questions.

true love is the etc. true love is going through life with another person. true love is being able to deal with the changes life throws at all humans and still stay together. there is spouse love, friend love  and there is parent /child love. we are  lucky to have  any of these loves in our lives.
on that note, on some sunny day in the near future im going to have to go see crime after crime.

sticks and stones will break your bones and so will words

the words one chooses wield  power. they can lift spirits or cut someone to the bone. it is so important to be careful of  the words one uses. words can push others to the brink.... a brink that they would never have reached had the speaker had chosen his speech more carefully.
i never liked the old nursery rhyme about sticks and stones and how supposedly words never hurt. .... i beg to differ. words can hurt even more because they are not a physical object.
use  words to convey love. use words to build world peace. use words to soothe.
never use words to injure or harass.

everyone should say i love you

take a moment to appreciate those who are important to you in your life. tell them how you feel. don't let the moment pass . don't let it be too late,  sometimes it can be too late.

"Just the way you are"

the most important thing is to be able to love and accept a person for who they are and not for what one wishes they would be. the only person one can change is oneself. sad , but true. then again its not so simple to change oneself either!
  after the initial stages of a relationship when two people get to know each other one sees who the other is good and bad. if one doesn't see any negatives it  is even scarier. to love a person for who he/she is means that there can be true love. if one only loves the illusion of what one thinks the other person is or wants the other person to be this is not true love and it wont last very long.

living in a plastic surgery world

if you ever bother to read women's magazines like allure or glamour you will see lots of articles on cosmetic surgery. from the sound  of these articles it would seem that everyone and there aunt its having plastic surgery. i suppose that this is because it is more affordable these days. the more i read about cosmetic surgery the more it enforces the fact that i do not desire it. i understand if someone is disfigured that they want to have it, but if its purely cosmetic, im not sure why someone willingly goes under the knife.
when i was a kid i had elderly relatives who looked their ages. they could not have had cosmetic surgery even if they wanted it because they couldn't afford it. my grandmother who was shot in the nose in a pogrom when she was a child did have a bit of plastic surgery, but plastic surgery is not what it is now so she still looked somewhat disfigured from it. and you know what? even though i noticed it and i thought her nose looked like a hamantashen, it didn't make me love her less. there had even been a time when she was younger that she could have had more cosmetic surgery to fix it but she didn't. she was married by then and my grandfather told her that he loved her and thought she was beautiful just the way she was. okay , maybe they would have had a hard time affording the cosmetic surgery at the time, but i do believe this is what my grandfather had felt at the time. they had met and married years after she had been shot in the face in that pogrom.
beauty is in  the eye of the beholder. its important to make one's self  as presentable as possible, but even those who do plastic surgery are not always happy. happiness comes from the inside. with all of joan rivers' plastic surgeries, she is always having more. when does it end?

true romance

we live in a culture that worships youth. the media mostly portrays young people as being the only age group that experiences true love. while i do believe that a young person is just as capable of love as an older person, i believe that true love is the love that has withstood the test of time. if you still love someone after parenting, various types of loss , wrinkles, possible illnesses , success as well as failure, you have really found true love. this is why i love the leonard cohen video of dance me to the end of love that i have just posted. elderly couples dancing together in front of their wedding photos is true romance. they love each other with every fiber of their beings . after fifty -sixty years of marriage they know exactly why they cherish each other.

Leonard Cohen - Dance Me to the End of Love [OFFICIAL VIDEO]: PG-13 rating

Happy Mother's Day

ive always thought of mother's day and father's day as important days. they wake a person up and force them to be thankful they have parents and for everything that their parents have done for them. this year mother's day has an even stronger meaning. my father has passed away and my mother is now my only living parent. i have always been grateful for her presence in my life, but now it is even more dear. it is so important to appreciate people when they are alive and in your life , when they can hear and see your appreciation. to all the mothers out there happy mother's day. and to everyone , appreciate your mother today and and everyday.

deja vu

i went to a singles event last night and all i kept thinking was "haven't i been here before?"

not only had i been at many singles events in that location, many of the same singles have been at those same events i was recollecting. kind of like the twilight zone.

this is not the alternate universe i wish to exist in, but exist there i do.

i ran in to many i hadn't seen in awhile . i had hoped they had perhaps gotten married. then again perhaps they had . and then got divorced. one never knows. its like even if you actually escape these events for awhile, lucky you might get to be sucked back into this awful scene due to divorce.

i hope i will be lucky enough to find a lasting relationship soon so i don't get to forever keep reliving the same singles event replete with all of the same singles.

the opposite of love

is hate really the opposite of love? i think that the opposite of love is indifference. one doesn't dislike the person enough to hate them. one is indifferent. indifference is what one feels long after the feelings of love has evaporated. i feel indifferent about many lost loves. where once the mere thought of them may have warmed my heart or made me see red, the sea of indifference has washed it all away.

love

ive always said that its better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. i still believe this. it just really sucks when things don't turn out like one would have liked them to. i hate the old adage "everything happens for a reason" , but being the eternal realist, i believe this to be accurate in affairs of the heart. there is a reason things may not work out , but we may not know immediately why this is. for me this is the hardest part. unfortunately sometimes i have found out later reasons why it was VERY good things had not worked out . how i had been saved from a life i would not have wanted. i would not have guessed it at the time.... but it turned out to be the best thing for me even though i had cried my eyes out at the time of the break up. so now is the time to stay strong ,ride the wave and have faith that someone better is just around the corner.....

under lock and key

on sunday while i was flipping through some cool books at urban outfitters i came across a book of postcards. one of the postcards really struck a chord. here goes: ' i ran away when you tried to find the key to my heart and i found someone else who will never want to find it. '
i pray that this will never be my postcard. relationships can be scary especially if i like someone, but i hope i am brave enough to face the challenge.