Day 2: Something you love about yourself

I love to live! I have an almost unquenchable thirst for life. I’m almost always up for an adventure—whether it’s a cross-country road trip or a newly discovered park in an adjacent neighborhood; a lick of my daughter’s sour candy or an exotic new ethnic food; I want to taste it, smell it, hear it, see it and feel it. I want to fill a pool with it and bathe in it—wallow around like a pig in slop and cover my entire physical being with life!
I think the greatest testament to my love of life is that my love is unconditional. I may not “like” all things about my life or my life experiences, but I accept and love them as my own. My willingness to open my eyes and my heart to the inevitableness of discomfort has allowed me to live life even harder.

I offer you this as a lighthearted example: I was cleaning my house on Sunday and sweating profusely. It was HOT and I don’t have central air conditioning. I was already crabby because—as I mentioned yesterday—I do NOT like to clean. That it was so hot was only making me more crabby. At one point, I flopped down in a chair and took a long drink of water. As I drank the water, I could feel the sweat beading on my head and running down my face, neck, and back. It struck me as amazing that I could actually feel my body sweating. As the droplet of perspiration swelled on my forehead, I resisted the urge to wipe it away. My patience was rewarded as I soon experienced the sensation of several small droplets joining into a gentle cascade down the contour of my face, leaving behind a trail of damp, cool skin. Twenty seconds ago, I was hot and sweaty and pissed off. Now I’m marveling at the mechanisms of the human body to cool itself. I look around my small house. I’m almost 40 years old and my furniture is still mostly a collection of cast offs from friends and relatives. No matter how much I clean and straighten, my home retains its cluttered, somewhat shabby, “lived-in” look and feel. But it’s mine. It represents who I am and what I stand for. And I love it just as much as I love the feel of that cold water rushing down my throat, into my stomach, and throughout my body. If I keep cleaning house, I might get to feel that same swig of water dampen my hairline.