Bad Thoughts, Warm Laughs

And seeing beauty when the world's on fire

Thinking good thoughts, I think

Steve and I have been sleeping in and having coffee in bed this week. We wake up without an alarm and it’s LIGHT outside. I get up to pee, turn on his drip coffee (aka “water coffee”) and make my French press. Then, we sink into a backrest of pillows and sip our morning elixirs while our Great Western Cedar sways in the morning light. I play my list of songs compiled by Spotify’s Discover Weekly and stare past the foot of our bed at three candy-colored glass candles flickering away.

Wednesday morning I woke up with the previous evening’s conversation on my mind. I had reunited with some dear girlfriends, and among the many topics covered, we shared experiences around: Spouses Who Are Our Opposites and the Private Thoughts We Have About Them. I’ve had a few. 😳 Had my husband?

“Do you ever look at me from across the room and have bad thoughts?” I asked Steve.

“No.” Steve said, his attention on his iPad.

“Oh come on,” I teased.

“I don’t,” he said. “But I’m sure you do about me.”

There was a pause. Steve glanced over and smirked. I started to chuckle.

“What, me? Not even!”

”Oh good one!” Steve laughed. “I think your nose just grew.”

We laughed harder. I looked into my husband’s eyes with a feeling of warmth and humor. I am the judgmental one in the relationship. It’s not even personal, it’s more of a programming, a habit of thought I just can’t shake. But there’s been a shift. The thoughts are quieter and I can watch them go by rather than acting on any thoughts that feel divisive. It felt good to settle into this laughter over our differences.

Then I blamed it on my mom—the queen of strong opinions. We laughed even harder.

I stroked the soft skin of my husband’s inner arm and returned to playing Wordle on my phone. You know what’s beautiful—aside from completing Wordle on the second try; aside from that soft patch of tender skin on the person you love—being able to laugh with your spouse at the sticky, achy, vulnerable topics of your relationship.

I’m currently reading this tearing-open of a marriage called Foreverland: The Divine Tedium of Marriage, by Heather Havrilesky. Brave, bold & beautiful with all the ugly bits thrown in.

In war and beauty news

I’m on a FB group for swim enthusiasts around the world, people who share their swims of the day. After the war in Ukraine broke out, members started to ask about a Ukrainian member who lies in Kyiv. “Where are you, are you OK? Has anyone heard from him?”

A few days later there was a response. This gentleman thanked everyone for the inquiries, then told us how it took five days to travel to Warsaw with his two generations of family members, and let us know there was a pool a half kilometer from the house they were staying at, and he had swum there. He posted photos of himself and the pool.

The next day, five women posted a photo of themselves standing on some wintry sea coast in swimsuits and parkas, holding a Ukrainian flag. The post read:

“We swim with [our Ukrainian swimmer].”

Sad, beautiful, united.

On the topic of HOW DO I RECKON WITH DAILY LIFE …

… WHEN THE WORLD IS ON FIRE?

How do I carry on with love, passion and courage when countries are at war, people are fleeing and dying, climate change is worsening, polarization increasing along with homelessness and violence?

Am I really going to pound on about … beauty?  

HELL YEAH. I really am.

And I invite you to join me in the Beauty Revolution. This one requires no makeup or hair styles, fashion sense or lifestyle brand. This is an intimate, naked exploration of the imperative quality of Beauty and being Human. Beauty as that which exhults the senses, and expands the mind and spirit; Beauty as an act of living, as surprise and awe, as connection, as a force/experience that lives inside and outside of us, beauty as omniscient, persistent and unconditional, whether we feel it or not.

This April, the Salon is going to go deep into the Beauty frontier, and look at how beauty continues to be necessary and omniscient when the world seems fraught, and personal lives grow dark.

Beauty During Troubled Times

How to live fruitfully when the world’s on fire

Email me with questions or to register. More details on Beauty During Troubled Times here.