Rock 'n Rollers Don't Bathe

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2012 Love and Friends
Welcome to the new year! For the past few years I've been consulting my internal crystal ball to come up with a theme for the year. I can't explain the process. It's usually something like the first thing that pops into my head. 2010 was: The Year of Enchantment and 2011 was: Something is going to happen. 2012 is: The Year of Love and Friends.

There is something about adversity that inspires us to discover love in all sorts of new places. Nan and I are fully into the guilty pleasure that is "Friday Night Lights" right now (a TV series that centers around High School football in a small town in southern Texas).

One of the running themes of the show that strikes me is how challenging the "L" word is for us at that age. It easily rolls off the tongue when talking about our favorite sport or car...or song from our favorite band . But when it comes time to express it towards another person we tread lightly. Allowing ourselves to love someone is allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. It's a leap of faith with a potential to be hurt if that love is not reciprocated. It's very hard to love unconditionally (I'm not totally convinced that it's fully possible). But I have learned, very much recently, that love is a great way to inspire. It is a currency that can grow a person just like patrons grow a business. I feel like sometimes we covet love as something a little too special. We save it for a few chosen ones and family members. Sometimes we get so bound up we manage to convince ourselves that we are allowed just one "real love" experience per lifetime.

This year I'm going to try to think about the idea of love and cultivating friends a little more like that "magic penny" that I remember singing about when I was a kid. I used to make my family laugh by performing this song in a faux operatic voice. The words seemed so cliche' and sentimental. But I feel like with the advent of things like the Occupy Wall Street movement, this year, people are starting to reconnect to all that stuff we were taught as kids. We teach things like "treating others the way you want to be treated" and "love is not about money or material things" to our children for a reason. And the reason is because they are right and true. And just because we enter the more complicated world of adulthood and politics doesn't mean we should leave these childhood lessons by the wayside.