What area of your life do you tend to enjoy in excess instead of moderation?
At one point in my early adult life, I had this issue with alcohol. I did not know my boundaries and was not in control. It was a destructive direction for me. Thank goodness I had the willpower and desire to stop in 1983. Other people can handle alcohol just fine, I could not.
Today, I would say my excesses are eating ice cream and unconditional love. The ice cream thing I need to work on if I want to make my body firmer. Unconditional love has no negative consequences whatsoever attached to it.
I am able to feel unconditional love most of the time. I could verbalize the feeling a lot more. To me, there is nothing like the fluttering rush of emotion when love touches me. It could be my wife's smile, the wag of Rosie's tail (our dog), the embrace of my siblings, the connection with my children, the A-Hah moment in a classroom, the roar of a V8 engine, a meal that comes together as you visualized it would, or the sight of a majestic mountain.
I am writing this as my daughter is defending her Ph.D. in Entomology. To earn a Ph.D. in science takes a lot of smarts, sacrifice, hard work, and even failures. The 5 years of dedication boiled down to a 57-minute Zoom presentation with 2 hours of questions by her committee. As I watched her presentation, so many emotions emerged in me and my eyes filled with tears of relief and joy. She was awesome! When she emerged from the meeting with positive results, I hugged and congratulated her. But my response did not represent in full the depth of pride and gratitude she earned and I felt. I did go back and open up completely about my feelings and how proud I am of her. I am learning slowly.
Love is uplifting, warm, and should be accessible to anyone open to receiving it. There are times I am so into my left brain that I do not notice the feeling right away. There are also times that I do not love myself enough to accept love from others. I do love myself more often today without the alcohol.
My richest opportunity is expressing it to others. There are so many people and things that I love and too many of those moments go by unacknowledged. I need to slow down, be present in the moment, soak in the entire feeling, and positively express that feeling to its source. Especially to those that will understand how I feel about them. So, if you see me talking to a mountain stream.........
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