We all have at least one life. That is the life that we live in our own minds. We live there alone. We have no direct communication with any other human mind. We have no contact except through our words and our behaviour. These two give us a promise of being able, in some degree, to live more than one life. And being able to share our life with others.
Thus are words and actions crucial to living a meaningful life. It is, therefore, important to understand the words and actions of others and to share words and actions that are understood accurately by others.
We share our words in sentences and our actions in sequences. They are complex. Words can hold a meaning given by the giver, another given by the culture, and a further held by the recipient. Good communication occurs when the meaning given by the giver is similar to the meaning received by the recipient.
Actions are also complex. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They also have a context in which the sequence occurs. The meaning of the action can come from any of those parts individually or in any combination. Good communication occurs when the meaning from the actor is the same as the meaning attributed to the action by the watcher.
One of the most, if not the most, important meaning is love. For it is that which will allow the relationship to flourish, will open the doors of communication, trust, and intimacy, and hold the promise of commitment over time.
All relationships based on love require attention from both so that they can learn what the other means by their words and actions. Love relationships are not based on one statement of loving but are based on the constant manifesting of loving (the giving and receiving of it) in the living of life together.
This Journey of Love is a history of words of loving written by me to my wife, Peggy, over the years of our life together. We met each other in 1980, when I set up an acute psychiatric unit for a university in South Africa. Peggy was the head nurse and ran the unit with me for 9 years. It was an amazing unit. We ran it more as a place for recovery and growth than just a medical hospital ward. All, patients and staff, were treated as valuable people. The permanent staff got to know each other very well. Peggy and I got to know each other very well, but there was no romance.
I left the unit in 1989 and came to Canada for the education of my children. There was no further contact between Peggy and I until 30 years later when, one day, I received a telephone call from her. We had an email conversation for a few years, then a few visits to Canada. Our good friendship blossomed into a loving relationship, and we married a few years ago.
During the times apart, the email years, we kept contact through long WhatsApp conversations and loving poems. Since living together, I have continued writing her love poems for that feeling runs deeply and true in me and because it makes moments in this very life in which I can share in words how special she is to me. When we go to bed at night, I will often read a few of these writings to her, so as she drifts off to sleep she can know how loved she is by me.
This section is going to be slowly filled with these writings.
The writings will. I hope, speak to you of your love and that you may find here echoes of your thoughts and feelings towards your partner and to those from your partner to you. Perhaps, if you do not have a partner, you may derive from these writings some empathic pleasure of the wonder and specialness of love and know in your heart in the center of your being there is there the consciousness of you that is lovable and is able to be wonderfully loving. I have a deep sense of that in Peggy and in all people. I love you.
John B. Carlile 