bakin' up some love

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Imagine a cupcake filled with a chocolate chip cookie...yum!

I've been eating too many cupcakes. Birthdays and holidays and baking days and I'm all sugared out. But my girls and I, we love us some sweets. We love to bake our food and I have a 'secret' ingredient I put in all our recipes. I'm pretty sure I got this idea from an Oprah show. I keep it in the spice cabinet in a tiny treasure chest leftover from some toy set. Only my oldest knows what's in it because I offered to tell her once she could make something from scratch. So, she got busy. Now my six year old daughter wants to know the secret, but she's not quite ready for the oven or the stove, so I tell her she's too little to use that ingredient yet. Don't tell, but there's nothing in that treasure chest except what I wrote on the bottom in sharpie marker. L O V E.  I pretend to sprinkle 'something' when I open it and then I stash it up high. . When my oldest mastered blueberry muffins, I let her look. She got it. She smiled and said 'aw, mom, I won't tell. Can I use it?" She also knows about Santa Claus. My next daughter is likely to be mad and make some flippant remark like "that's it, that's all" like the time I gave her clothes for Christmas when she was five. She put her hands up in shock and said "Clothes! I want toys, but thanks mommy..."

So my focus in life right now is to get busy baking up some love. Mother Daughter Love. Friend to Friend Love. Pet Love. Home Love. Garden Love. Get the Pool Ready for Spring Love. I am not a wife, or a sister, or a niece, or an aunt anymore. So I will collect love when and where I can find it. I collect people too. Those people know when I've scooped them up into Dawnland. I love them. I tell them. I show them. I especially love to collect other kindred spirits who much like myself, seek out their own kind. I love lovers. You can't fake being a lover. If you aren't a lover, chances are I can figure you out in one sniff. Lovers love. Lovers would never intentionally hurt another soul. And if they do, they feel badly for it. Lovers also know other lovers when they see them. There's always a hug. Eye contact. Smiles. A hello and of course a good-bye. They are soul mates. They already know each other.

I'm a lover, but more importantly, I'm a lover who wants to teach love. Does that make sense? I'd teach self love on my syllabus first. It's not too original of an idea. It's been done before. In fact, one of my favorite educators is the late Leo Buscaglia, or as they called him at USC, Dr. Love. He taught a class called 'LOVE1A' once a year at USC. Love1A was free, not a required class, and no grade would be received after having finished it; so naturally, it was the most popular class on campus. I'm one of those fortunate educators that was introduced to his ideas and books early on and devoured them all as I began my professional career. I  knew I needed a leader that was at least speaking a language I already understood. Dr. Love became my surrogate parent and mentor.

To me, the art of teaching is that often that you teach best when you teach what you confidently know after you learned by experience exactly what not to do. It's when you are unconsciously competent, that is, you don't even have to think about the subject you teach, it comes to you effortlessly, you are good at it, and if you're really talented, it comes to you naturally.  It's the act of self reflecting and creating a plan better than the last one. To me, to love, is to honor love above all else which is why I get so mad at haters. Haters only want to hate. I'm very fond of telling haters off. I really should love haters. Only a fully enlightened human being loves the haters. I'm not there yet. Haters are like moths, seekers of light, but if you are a hater and you get too close to me, I will burn you.  Being a flame, I attract my share of moths. Because I have a keen sense other people's emotions, I try to give the moths what they crave. Light and Love! As such, I always try to reflect openness and kindness as opposed to distance and cruelty because I feel that's how we find happiness, by reflecting it and when we reflect happiness and love the more people will be happy and if more people are happy more people are happy and the more we love the more we grow and well you get the fucking point, right? Soul mates aren't just for lovers either. Any relationship that makes you evolve into a better version of yourself is a soul mate, IMO. 

Dr. Love taught me you have to love you in order to love you. You cannot honor your body, your mind, or your spirit without first honoring your self. What I've learned over the past few years is that if you put everyone first, in spite of yourself, you will inevitably fail.  Just like we are instructed to put the oxygen mask on in case of an emergency on a plane, you have to put yourself first, if you want your plane to stay airborne. Otherwise, eventually it's crash and burn. We are all born with gifts and are worthy of happiness and love. Not everyone believes they deserve either, nor do they go searching for it so directly. I know what works for me. Point. Aim. Shoot.