As a younger boy, I think in kindergarten, I remember feeling my first crush on a girl in my class. Her name was Dixie. She wore a purple shirt. I remember chasing her, and her me, on the playground. Such frolicking, and innocent fun, right.
In other stages of life, I remember other stages of love. A crush on a teacher. Being shy in middle school and high school, but eventually falling head over heals with a steady girlfriend that would shape so much of young adult life.
As life grows, I suppose perhaps, so does love. I realize that love becomes so much more than infatuation and a lot of firsts. It also becomes heavy lifting and being able to stand in a whole lot of imperfect together. It becomes grace, working with difference, a baseline of unity over years, and even a few scars to show for challenges along the way.
It is human to fall in love, isn’t it.
It is human to desire connection, isn’t it.
It is human and natural to want to be in association, isn’t it.
Something in us, I believe, knows this. From a soft or afraid heart. And from an instinct to be wise.
I’m learning about reclaiming the naturalness of wanting to be in connection, of wanting to be open to feeling love, and to being love. I’m learning, on so many layers, as people paying attention have for eons, that there is energy in love. An expansion. It’s different than the energy of fear, which so often is a contraction. And though these may be topics most often taken on by poets, they apply of course to working with teams.
I’m headed in to a week of offering a workshop on teams. How delicious. And I realize that I’m continuing to learn (in a no finish line kind of way) about love and being in love.
In love with, self.
In love with, other.
In love with, community.
In love with, silence.
In love with, rest.
In love with, challenge.
In love with, mystery.
In love with, the unknown.
In love with, uncertainty.
In love with, difference.
In love with, ease.
In love with, this moment followed by the next.
Amazing by what can get started with girls named Dixie wearing purple shirts, isn’t it.