"Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun, like struggle.

To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is,

right here and now." - Fred Rogers

Today, I begin the last six months of my part-time work at Fresno State as a retired annuitant. I am very grateful for the opportunity the university, and my colleagues here, have given me to make the transition from my full-time career to full-time retirement just as I have hoped to. Having spent the last month away from work, I’ve had more time to practice being retired, and that has included more time to think. I’ve spent some of that time thinking about what is most important of all to me. Love, and my loved ones. Someday, I hope to publish a series of essays about how we experience, express, and act on our love, and how it connects us all. Today, I will share some more personal thoughts and feelings about love that I’ve been setting down to feed the process of writing those essays.

The words I share today are for my beloveds, and for each of them in their own way. For Sue, our sons, my sisters, my precious friends and family. All my dearest beloveds. Although those closest to me tease me lovingly about being “I love you, man”, and they are absolutely right to, I try to temper the way that I share my feelings. My emotions are powerful, and love by far the strongest of all, so I try always to hold something back. While I want to celebrate with every breath and heartbeat the love and joy my loved ones inspire in me, I remind myself to celebrate in silence much of the time.

For all my strong feelings, and the strong desire to share them in celebration of the joy and love they’ve brought to my life, I do try to measure my words and actions. I can be afraid of pushing my loved ones away, or offending any one of them in my effort to celebrate all they’ve given me. I’ve felt them pull back from me when I reveal the depth of my feelings too openly. Forgetting to whisper, or simply sit silently with, a joy that begs to be shouted out loud. I’ve felt their doubt when I share the beauty, kindness, and glorious strength I see in them, forgetting that they too can question, or fail to see, the way they shine. Just as I struggle with my own self doubts, so do they. I wish they could see themselves shine with my eyes, and with my heart.

I remind myself that to say “I love you” as often as the wonder of my love for them overflows my heart and fills my world might make the words near meaningless. And so I strive to live my love for them in my actions, my choices, my stillness, and my gratitude for the grace of their love in my life. I seek always a balance as I live my love. How can I live “I love you” by offering comfortable silence, a foot rub, a cup of tea, focusing extra energy and attention on the things that bring them joy, studying their comfort, and honoring their separateness and need for a space and time of their own? Remembering that honoring the beloved means honoring how they wish to be loved.

I pay attention to my motivations as I express my love for my loved ones. Leo Buscaglia has said "Love is always bestowed as a gift-freely, willingly and without expectation. We don't love to be loved; we love to love." I want to love that way. At the same time, the words of Samuel Beckett resonate with me as he writes "If you do not love me, I shall not be loved. If I do not love you, I shall not be loved." While I seek to avoid expressing love in an effort to have it returned, I do want to be loved. To feel the overflowing joy and comfort of being in the presence, or even in the thoughts and memory of the beloved. I also admit that I sometimes seek solace for my own loneliness and insecurity. It feels like this is not a part of loving itself so much as one of the ways we can care for one another in love.

I want to live my love as openly and genuinely as I can, partly because I need to, mainly because I find my greatest joy in growing closer, and simply being close, with my beloveds. At the same time, it is clear that there are ways that I might wish to express my love that are less easy for my beloveds to comfortably enjoy and accept. I’m not talking about anything out of the ordinary, extraordinary, sharing of love that is the gift we give and receive in loving. It’s just that even gazing into a loved one’s eyes, or saying “I love you”, or “I am in love with you” is sometimes more than is wanted or needed between lover and beloved.

My power and choice are only over the love that I give and express. How my beloveds feel and express their love for me is entirely their own. We are each responsible for how we live our love. In the end, I’m not sure I have power or choice over loving. My beloveds call forth love from me and I love the way I breathe. The way my heart beats. At my best, all this paying attention to how I can offer my best self blends into simply loving. I believe this loving will go on even after we die. I choose the way I express my love, and to some extent I choose how I experience their love for me. I may choose how much I attend to the warm peace, gentle oneness, pain of separation, aching loneliness, and soaring glory of the love I feel for and share with my loved ones.

The gift of a passing gentle touch, serving them in love with a meal, a glass of water or wine. The joy of listening to their voices as they share their feelings and memories. Of seeing their delight, sadness, intelligence, strength, gentle kindness, creativity, laughter, shining humanity, and love in their eyes and faces. Of being present together in the quiet of the morning, or at sunset, or any shared moment suspended in time.

There are moments of wonder that happen all on their own between those who love. Even when I am holding back, respecting the space between us, and my beloved is content to let things glow quietly with the warmth we share, flashes of pure love can join us gently together. The fabric of our love is woven of strong warm threads, sparkling with drops of dew shining in the light of joy. Especially without trying we can find ourselves sharing completely these moments of love. One loving warmth together for an instant that contains eternity.

I wish that we could live forever in moments like that, Beloved. Shining quietly, or singing together. Warm and bright like the sunlight on your shoulders and sparkling from the water. Two and One at once in love everlasting. I am working on remembering that we do.

As I live my love the best I can, I will hesitate in and measure my loving. Seeking the best steps for each partner, and each moment, in our dances of love. Ebbing and flowing like the waves that offer themselves to your bare feet. Inviting you to dance along the edge, run and dive in laughing, slip gently into the cool welcoming water, or stand and watch silently in peaceful joy. Just as you wish.

Someday we will shine revealed together beyond all space and time. Our colors joining and shimmering into aurora, starlight, moonbeams, and the light in your eyes that touches me gently in my deepest places and invites me to live always in love.

Just as we do now and always have.


I have taken care over these words. I could choose and polish them for hours more trying to make them right. I will let them go now as one more offering to my beloveds, and to all who love. There are so many more thoughts and feelings I would share about this most precious and vital feeling that gently weaves us together. That for me is the very fabric of the universe and the slow, sweet, lovesong that it sings. In my retirement, I will learn what more I choose to offer from my thoughts and feelings about love. For now, here is a poem I wrote as this past month of retirement began.


He Tries to Explain Himself

Do you know your eyes contain the sun,

and all her sister stars?

That your light warms my world and heart

as though I were always in your arms?

Do you know your laughter sings to me,

and your gentle silence sweeter still?

Your presence like the gentle rain

that brings the spring that greens these hills.

Close enough to hold my hand

or much too far away,

your light and music fill my life.

They bless my night and day.

To share this turning world with you

is comfort, peace, and shining glory.

So I will be my best for you,

and live my grateful joy.

I will not always speak my love,

honoring our quiet play.

When I am bold, I’ll sing my heart,

then shyly turn my eyes away.

Jim Michael - February 1, 2019