Always the First Time

"Make it New"
- Ezra Pound

Over the years I have heard many "experts" discuss elaborate theories about what makes a relationship "good". Then a friend of mine introduced me to a Buddhist lama who hinted that he knew the secret of keeping love alive.

"It's simple", he said. "All you have to do is act as if you have just met this person and are falling in love. When you meet someone you are interested in, everything they do is wonderful. You love looking at them, hearing what they have to say. Even when they play music that you hate, you think, "Well, maybe it isn't so bad after all." As time goes on, however, you take the person for granted and fight over the "isn't so bads". The lama said that it was simple, but...he never said it was easy."

I believe the lama was right. The secret to love (and a sense of joy and gratitude toward all of life) is to see, hear, and feel as if for the First Time. Focus anew on the juiciness of an orange, or the softness of your loved one's hands. Before you get too used to her kind words, or his musical laughter, that they become invisible.

A friend of mine recently remarked about how easy it is to get blinded to the miracles around us. When they brought their newborn daughter home from the hospital, they couldn't sleep because they were too busy looking into her peaceful face and crying tears of gratitude.

Now, just a few months later, they find themselves taking her presence for granted, already losing that overwhelming sense of appreciation for her being sent to them. They get bored because it is so much the same, day after day. But her spirit, her presence, is no less a miracle today than it was at her birth, or will be forty years from now. When we remember that, we can catch ourselves "falling asleep" to the miracle and our hearts once again fill with joy.

When we can live our lives as if it is always the first time...the first time we kissed, the first time we gazed upon the face of our beloved, the first time we tasted ice cream, the first time we put snowshoes for skiing, the first time we saw a cardinal...we won't have to try to experience a sense of gratitude. It will be there, automatically, as a natural response to the beauty and the bounty.