WALKING AND TALKING

Jean, what would you do if I died?

I thought that was an interesting and thought provoking question to ask my wife of many years during an after dinner walk. Jean, on the other hand, thought it was a strange and morbid question to ask anyone during an after dinner walk, but she answered it anyway.

I would move to Albuquerque, she said without skipping a beat.

I skipped a beat--let me tell you why. Over the previous few years Jean's entire family had moved from Sheboygan, Wisconsin to Albuquerque. Jean and I had some of our best vacations in New Mexico. A corporate co-worker and I had fantasized about getting out of the Chicago rat race and buying a hardware store in Albuquerque. As you can see, I was mentally settled in the Land of Enchantment already, and now I find out that the only thing that was keeping me from living out my dream was my not being dead! I thought it would be an interesting and thought provoking question.

Within the next eighteen months we were living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The only sacrifice we had to make was my being alive.

That walking Q & A session taught us something we hadn't realized about ourselves (besides how cumbersome my being alive was). We realized that where we lived was important to us. We wanted to hang our hearts where there were mountains, sun and a sky you could see through. For other people the physical trappings of where they live mean little, for them it is the job, or closeness to family, or being able to hang around the old neighborhood.

There is nothing intrinsically right or wrong about where you choose to live or any other of life's choices, as long as you know what your choices are and choose to make them.

Get out after dinner and take a walk.

Lesson:Communicate with people important in your life about things that are important in your life.

LOVE IS A MANY SPLINTERED THING

In an interview aired years ago with the singer Boy George, not to be confused with the actor John Wayne, Boy said, "Any love is good love." Mr. George was answering a question relating to his sexual preference, so we can only guess what he meant by "any love", but the truth of his statement stuck with me.

It's been many years since my first dog-best-friend, Lucky, died and I'm still not over it. It's still hard to talk or even write about. Does love of an animal fit under the "any love" category?

The first three dictionary definitions of the word love ties love to a person. Definition four states, "A strong fondness or enthusiasm for someTHING." I accept that Lucky was not a person, but he definitely was not a "thing" and he was loved. (Obviously, Mr. Webster didn't know Lucky.)

Is it possible to love an animal as much as a person or an ash tray as much as an animal? Is that what "any love" means? Heck yes!

Love, to me, loosely encompasses anything (person, place, thing or animal) without which my life would be less. Selfish? Sure, but love is selfish. The more something means to YOU the more you love it, which makes love a multi-level concept. While you may simultaneously "love" your new electric can opener, your tropical fish and your spouse, the loss of one of those loves would leave a greater hole in your life than the loss of the other two. (Which one I'll leave up to you.)

Selfish love may not be a popular opinion and I guess, since anything is possible, it's possible to love some person, place, thing or animal for its own sake, but that depth of pure unselfish love is very, very rare. If selfish love bothers you, think of a true, top of the love-list love you have in your life. Could you lose that love without any "selfish" feelings? (How could this happen to ME? What will I do without him/her/it?)

I read the obituaries and feel badly for the deceased and their families for as long as it takes me to read about them, then it's on to the comics. My lost dogs, I still morn. I must be some kind of an unfeeling, sick, weirdo moping more over dogs than people. I may well be an unfeeling, sick, weirdo, but not in this instance because I don't know those people, but my dogs were MY dogs. Their loss affected me personally.

Love, at its simplest, is a hard concept. It's both hard to define, hard to apply and often takes losing love's object to know we had love at all. Considering love as a selfish human emotion may be a hard notion to grasp, but it is easy to accept when you consider, after all, you are the Center of the Universe. (See previous lessons)

Lesson: Love thy neighbor for thy self.