The Actual Dance as a play presents the events of the year 2000 from my point of view as the spouse of the woman going through breast cancer. Now, seventeen years later, it is apparent that I did not fully understand how deeply the experience impacted me. It took me 12 years to write the story, so to speak, and the last nearly 5 years I have been telling it through performances of the play. Every October I blog daily to help in raising awareness and to share elements of the story that I hope are of value to those who read these blogs. (All quoted lines are text from the play.)
Day 28 What Love Really Means. “It didn’t take us very long to fall in love, though I wonder if two 20-year olds really understood what love meant?”
The Actual Dance is also the story of discovery of what love really means.
I didn’t understand that at first, even though I wrote the words of the play and lived the story. I told some of this on Day 24 when I argue that our getting together was B’Shert or “meant to be.” Noticing each other in 1961, dating in 1964 and getting married in 1966.
Even though Susan and I thought we were in love back in 1966, and we went ahead at 21 (me) and 20 (Susan) got married, I do not think we really understood what love means.
Yesterday, I observed that the ritual of holding Susan at hear last breath would be “the ultimate consummation of our love” – and I still believe that to be true: holding the hand of the one you love through end of live is the ultimate act of love.
What love really means though is contained in two different lines in the play. “I am the other half of that which makes us, Susan and me, complete.” And “When else in our lives is it more important to be whole than when OUR body is badly broken.”
Real love takes time. It is having a life time together, the ups and downs, the challenges and successes. It is the melding of two souls as into a whole “each and equal half of the other”
Stat of the Day: Men get breast cancer too. About 2,350 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2015. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000.
Task of the Day: Say “I love you” to the person(s) you love most in the world at least three times today and every day: In the morning, in the evening and at bed time.
Resource of the Day: Read Jacob Needleman’s book, The Wisdom of Love. I think he nails it.
The Actual Dance: Performances. Donate.
Day 28 What Love Really Means. “It didn’t take us very long to fall in love, though I wonder if two 20-year olds really understood what love meant?”
The Actual Dance is also the story of discovery of what love really means.
I didn’t understand that at first, even though I wrote the words of the play and lived the story. I told some of this on Day 24 when I argue that our getting together was B’Shert or “meant to be.” Noticing each other in 1961, dating in 1964 and getting married in 1966.
Even though Susan and I thought we were in love back in 1966, and we went ahead at 21 (me) and 20 (Susan) got married, I do not think we really understood what love means.
Yesterday, I observed that the ritual of holding Susan at hear last breath would be “the ultimate consummation of our love” – and I still believe that to be true: holding the hand of the one you love through end of live is the ultimate act of love.
What love really means though is contained in two different lines in the play. “I am the other half of that which makes us, Susan and me, complete.” And “When else in our lives is it more important to be whole than when OUR body is badly broken.”
Real love takes time. It is having a life time together, the ups and downs, the challenges and successes. It is the melding of two souls as into a whole “each and equal half of the other”
Stat of the Day: Men get breast cancer too. About 2,350 new cases of invasive breast cancer are expected to be diagnosed in men in 2015. A man’s lifetime risk of breast cancer is about 1 in 1,000.
Task of the Day: Say “I love you” to the person(s) you love most in the world at least three times today and every day: In the morning, in the evening and at bed time.
Resource of the Day: Read Jacob Needleman’s book, The Wisdom of Love. I think he nails it.
The Actual Dance: Performances. Donate.
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