February 2008 Lesley Garner
Set Your Compass to Love
What is your inner compass set to? Are you aware of having an inner compass at all or are you helplessly buffeted by the wind and weather of emotion, the victim of external forces from the moment your feet touch the ground in the morning to the moment you embrace the dark of night?
Try setting your compass to the true north of love. When your eyes open at daylight do you love what or who you see? Do you love the face on the pillow beside you? If you do, lucky you. If not, why are they in your bed at all?
If you are the only person in your bed, do you love your sheets? The colour of your walls? The objects on your bedside table? The pattern of your curtains or the view from your window? If the answer is no, you might feel a bit depressed. It might be difficult to change the person in your bed or the view from your window but it is not at all difficult to change your curtains or your sheets. Once you start to make a conscious choice and choose things that you love a profound change can be set in motion.
William Morris said we should not have anything in our homes that we did not find to be useful or believe to be beautiful. Here is my counsel of perfection. Do not have anything in your life that you do not love.
Make love the most over-used word in your vocabulary. Let it kick out routine and habit. When you get dressed in the morning do you love your underwear, your shoes, your fragrance, your ties, your clothes? Did you buy them because you loved them or because you¹re stuck wearing a uniform or because you thought they were cheap or inoffensive or useful and would cover your lumpy bits? Do you love the way they make you feel or do they make you feel comfortably invisible?
Do you love what you eat for breakfast or is it a mindless habit? Do you have an activity you love to look forward to at the end of the day or do you watch television. Do you really love watching television? Do you love your neighbourhood or is it just handy for transport?
You get the idea. Every single waking moment of our loves offers us choices we can exercise through love, and the simpler the choice the easier it is to make it with love. We can choose to build love from the ground up instead of grasping it out of some future sky.
I love fresh flowers. I love the bunch of daffodils I bought for less than a pound which sits in a blue jug I love on the faded tablecloth I love because I bought it on holiday, spread on the wooden table I love because I fell for the grain and sheen of its surface. This cumulation of simple objects kickstarts my day each morning.
My act of love is the act of attention which takes each object in and acknowledges its place in my life. I can swallow a bowl of cereal inattentively or I can sit at my table and enjoy it slowly, appreciating the blue-rimmed china bowl I eat it from, enjoying the company of my jug of daffodils and the view of the clump of bamboo in my garden which I can see bending in the morning wind. I love the bamboo and the way it dances. I love
the fact that I planted it from a pot and it is now a little grove of stems that give me shade in summer.
If there are people at my breakfast table I can grunt at them from behind the newspaper, which I admit I often do, or I can perform that act of attention , of gratitude, that consciously takes in their presence, listens to what they say, gives thanks for their company. If I have started my day with love I have a small head start on the brutal forces of indifference and chaos that wait for us all. And I have also tuned myself to recognize and experience love in the confusion and variousness of the day ahead. If my inner compass is set to love, I may get lost a thousand times but it will always guide me home.
Lesley Garner is the author of several books, including Everything I've Ever Done That Worked, (one of my favorites!) available at www.hayhouse.com. She has also been an art critic, book and film reviewer and columnist. She travels widely and has lived in Ethiopia and Afghanistan, and currently resides in London