Tag: Love

This Kiss, This Kiss

Spring is a season of cliches and love — bees snuggle into flower pollen, birds open their breasts wide for a song, rabbits rub noses like tiny pink erasers across a sheet of paper, a pair of hawks wing and dance across the sky over our neighborhood, weddings are being planned, and the light livens and lifts winter blues. It is a fetching time of year of new beginnings and an urgency for love.

If you’re a scientist though, the lovesickness can be blamed on one very real thing. “It’s dopamine,” says Helen Fischer, a neuroscientist, professor at Rutgers University, and author of five books on the science of love. Fisher says dopamine is a naturally occurring chemical your brain uses to make you want things. There are other systems involved in love, but when it comes to new love, dopamine is the main culprit. And with enough of it swirling around your system, you’re prone to fall in love — and fall hard.

Spring unpacks color, fresh smells from bursting flowers and foliage, and people shed layers of their clothes wearing brighter fabrics, exposing more of themselves. They unknowingly embrace this season of renewal.

Every April your brain unwittingly becomes a dopamine factory, turning you into a love junkie. Brain scans of people flooded with the stuff look a lot like brain scans of drug addicts. This makes sense, since being high on dopamine feels, as many lovers would put it, euphoric.

Then there is Molly Shannon’s character in Superstar obsessing for her first kiss; endless songs and poems have been written of spring, longing, desire, and recognition through a first kiss. Here is a simple stanza from Wadsworth Lines Written in Early Spring –

The birds around me hopped and played:
Their thoughts I cannot measure,
But the least motion which they made,
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

What is your pleasure of spring and a memory of your first kiss? Was it in this month of April, which symbolizes ‘to open’? Spring is abundant in its offerings, a delight to the senses, a gift to move forward and renovate our awareness and mental balance…a time to feel love.

Mental Feng Shui for a Peaceful and Orderly Mind

I was given this reminder in 2008 and I refer to it often. I hope you find it helpful.


 1. Exceed expectations and do it cheerfully.

 2. Remember the three R’s: Respect for self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all your actions.

3. Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

 4. When you lose, DON’T lose the lesson.

5. When you say ‘I love you’ mean it.

 6. When you say ‘I’m sorry’ look the person in the eye.

 7. Believe in love at first sight.

 8. Love deeply and passionately. You might get hurt but it’s the only way to live life completely.

 9. Be engaged at least a year before you get married – know the person through all seasons.

10. Marry a man/woman you love to talk to. As you get older, their conversational skills will be as important as any other.

11. Never laugh at anyone’s dreams. People who don’t have dreams don’t have much.


12. In disagreements, fight fairly. No name calling. Speak your truth without rancor.


13. When someone asks you a question you don’t want to answer, smile and ask, ‘Why do you want to know?’


14. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

15. Talk slowly but think quickly.

16. Don’t let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

17. Remember memories are made with people, not things. When all is said and done, it will be the experiences you have and people you love that will be important – not the car or jewelry.


18. Don’t judge people by their relatives.


19. Don’t believe all you hear, use your common sense; don’t spend all you have, give some away; don’t sleep all you want, just all you need. Life is short – be part of it.


20. Smile when you answer the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.

21. Be kind to animals, we share their planet.

22. Say ‘bless you’ when you hear someone sneeze.


23. Daily – Spend some time alone. Spend time with God.

A true friend is someone who reaches for your hand and touches your heart.

All Kinds

A friend mentioned in her email that since her husband wasn’t feeling well, it was she who had to fill her car with gas, an act her husband usually did because he knew she hated doing it. It touched me, making me think about his act of love for her. These acts are all kinds and come in all sizes to expand one’s heart, no matter what. Like when:

My brother-in-law buys clothing for my sister’s birthday or Christmas—jackets and dresses that fit her perfectly. The gifts are nice, but more, he knows her. Relationship love.

A woman from Poland is raising funds to build an eighty-room shelter for refugees crossing the border from Ukraine, the old, women and children. Love for mankind.

A pet is euthanized with the owner’s arms wrapped around their neck, stroking them as gentle words of love drift over both like comforting incense. Animal love.

My granddaughter insists the stuffed animal you bought at the store with her is for you, not her, and she smiles when you hug it to your chest, her beautiful brown eyes gleaming with happiness that now you own one too. Child love.

Your hairdresser has moved and the one who takes her place gives you a style that closely resembles that of Elvis. Your sister says, “It doesn’t really look that bad.” You know she is lying, but doesn’t want to wipe out the little bit of self-confidence you have left. Sister love.

I could go on, but I’m sure you have a long list to add to mine. We just sometimes forget.