Whatever Happens, Love that

On Friday my parent's stopped by my house on the way to check on my elderly grandmother. As I mentioned a few weeks ago my Grandpa passed and she's been on her own trying to cope with that as we all attempt to not spread this heinous virus any further. But my lovely Mama who created the obsessive bookworm I am today brought a recent book of hers so that I could read it....I read it in 2 days...

"Whatever Happens, Love that" is Blix's mantra throughout the book. I am using this mantra for life. It is perfect, and wonderful and to be perfectly honest I fell in love with Blix despite the novel being mostly about Marnie, it was also a wonderful tribute to Blix's life. Blix was wild, she was a warrior, she was a witch, she was probably one of the most amazing people any author could dream up. 

I have a sudden urge to move to Brooklyn and live in an old brownstone, with potted plants on the roof and neighbors all up in my business. If I'm being completely honest those are the neighbors I will always long for and want. I want the neighbors that you have endless conversations with, the neighbors who become your life-long friends. That's something I feel like this world doesn't have any more. Maybe in more rural small towns, maybe even in Brooklyn. But in L.A. this is not something we have. 

I live in a very small apartment complex, I know everyone in the building, mostly because they know my husband... he grew up in this building. Most of the people here have been here for about the same amount of time. We don't talk, we smile and say hello. The older guy who sits out back smoking tells me that my son is beautiful and an angel, and that every time he sees him he gets so big! He tells me I'm constantly working....He's been hinting at me to slow down for months as he sees me run back and forth across the building to the laundry room on weekends, taking my son to the park, lugging groceries up the stairs, going and coming from work. He laughed and made the same comment a couple weekends ago as I was once again doing laundry. He is the closest I have come to that neighbor. I do not know his name, we never exchanged formal introductions. I took everyone in the apartment homemade cookies when I moved in, he gave me a bottle of wine. I've decided we are kindred spirits since then. I don't know his name and I at this point, I don't think it's necessary. 

I do love the idea though of having a best friend that lives next door, that comes over every morning and we make breakfast together and annoy my husband. It sounds divine. In a perfect world the next door neighbor would be my sister and our kids would run around going crazy and our husbands would be nerds and we would take tea up to the roof and just be. 

I love Blix's entire essence. The vitality of life she kept even to 85, even to her death. I want to live a life that full, that fulfilling. I want to be a person that radiates sunshine into other people's lives. The thought of that is so enchanting. 

I came to a realization the other morning, after having finished the novel I sat there and I thought about it. We all have intuitions, little nudges, that I feel a lot of the time we don't act on. I will be sitting there and out of the blue have the sudden urge to text someone to check on them, to write someone a note. A lot of the time I ignore it, I'm busy, it's too late, it's too early. I can't mail a person a random note, that's WEIRD. But that morning I put it to the test. With things beginning to reopen my Mom was going back to work, and she was nervous, I knew she was nervous, but I was sitting there listening to a new audiobook sipping my coffee and enjoying a peaceful moment to myself before work started. I had this sudden urge to text my mom, wish her a good first day back, tell her it would be okay. I pushed it aside, yeah I'll text her when my "me" time is up, I'll text her when I get up to go shower and get ready for work...I couldn't concentrate on the book because I kept getting that urge to text her, my mind starting to formulate what to say. Normally I'd keep pushing it down, oh my god I'll text her before I start work or check on her on my lunch or talk to her at the end of the day. But I decided to humor myself and the experiment instead. I texted my mom. Her response was honestly path altering for me. Her response "I really needed that". 

How many times has my intuition pushed me to take care of the people I loved and I ignored it, how much more light and love and happiness could I have been pouring into the world. How much more could we all have? I know I'm not the only one, we get the urge to text or call someone and it's random and we're busy, so we wait. Maybe those thoughts are popped into our head because somehow in the cosmic universe we know, we can feel the vibrations from them, we just don't realize it. 

When I was looking at cute couple tattoos with my husband to inspire us to come up with our own option I stumbled across the most beautiful belief it is called the red thread of fate, it's a Japanese belief that the gods have tied a red thread to the pinky finger of people who are destined to meet, that regardless of circumstance etc those two people will meet. In looking it up tonight to make sure I was remembering correctly I found the most beautiful thin that proves my point. The Japanese believe that this is not limited to romantic relationships, anyone that is going to have a profound impact on your life is tied to you by this red thread. Wouldn't it be possible then, that these threads remain after we have found each other and that through these invisible ties we can feel in some deep part of our soul when someone who is profoundly impactful on our life, someone we deeply care about, that they need us. 

I'm not sure how much I believe in Blix's spells, but I do believe in her energy. That it is possible to send good energy and good thoughts people's way, that they can receive that good energy, those good thoughts. Whether in your reality you call them spells, or blessings or prayers, I think we should all be sending more love and light to each other. That we should be looking back to a time when talking to your neighbors was normal, when telling a woman in the store who clearly needs it, that she looks beautiful? When  did it become so hard for us to communicate and relate to each other? When did we stop trusting ourselves and instead made ourselves feel uncomfortable for saying the things our mind pushes us to say, the things people clearly need to hear from us

"Matchmaking for Beginners" by Maddie Dawson

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36439333-matchmaking-for-beginners