Puppy and Yuppy Love

Finn adores me.  I mean really adores me.  I know this because he'll reach up and rest a paw on my thigh while I'm reading.  Or wedge himself in between the chair and my feet, just to be near me.  Or lean in close to my face, breathing in the air that seeps slowly from my nostrils.

Friendship is that way--both simple and inexplicable.  And it always leaves me feeling like I've caught something magical in my peripheral vision, something sparkly that whizzed by when I wasn't quite looking.  I suppose friendship is the reason I get up every morning and, despite reading the headlines, feel a bit of hope about things.

Those invisible, forgiving, adoring ties that bind us to each other are the greatest gifts of all.  Even if we did get an iPhone 5 for Christmas--which I didn't.  The low hum of loving and being loved by another--whether transmitted from man or beast, maple tree or moon--reverberates all the way to my grateful fingertips. 

In these times, hate is the cheap commodity, traded without forethought between faceless factions.  But love--dished out despite everything we know about each other--that is the gold standard that keeps our personal economies afloat.

Not even the snarkiest post-modern cynicism has a chance in the face of such pure truth.

That said, though, it is easy to love because of.  But it is really something to love despite all the facts.  As I get older, I seem to toss up more and more reasons to love me despite, and, yet, people keep showing up for that tedious job--friends I've had since nothing more than a street address brought us together; people I met long ago in the sticky heat of a tassled corn field; folks who've seen me at my worst and, more often, my not-so-spectacular; family members who have heard things seep from my body that would cause others to run for the hills.

More than the act of turning a calendar page, it is the love both of and from others--human, canine, botanical, astronomical--that fuels my resolution to be a better person.  And it's  not because I fear that they may turn their backs on me if I don't kick up my game a notch; rather, I resolve to be a bit better because their love nudges something better from me.