Image by ccmerino via Flickr

Yesterday, Marc and I celebrated our 22nd anniversary. This consisted of spending the day together and talking, a yummy meal, and a movie on the laptop as we cuddled on the bed watching it together. This may sound a little boring to many of you, but if everyday was your wedding day, how would you spend the birth day of your union? In other words, we celebrate it everyday and we believe to honor such profound connection is to live it everyday in everything we do. Let me explain…

The Moments

We all have moments in our lives where time becomes suspended, or perhaps a better description would be transcended: All the moments of eternity stop and converge at the experience you’re having right then and when you flow past those moments, they remain available to you forever. If it’s a positive experience, it’s like the universe stops to share the moment in joy with you. If negative, it stops to mourn with you. It’s as though time’s boundaries have fallen away to become a flow instead of discreet packets of information that are locked in little packages we call seconds, minutes, or hours.

When time removes its boundaries for a positive experience, it seems that the emotional source is free to flow with that true time, spilling its happiness over itself and onto others. If the moment is a shared one, the level of synchronization between the individuals involved becomes profound. In fact, you learn that the walls you thought separated you into separate beings is an illusion. Instead, you find that you were, are and always will be connected. I think that’s why the moments of flow are preserved: Just so we are able to go back, re-live and bring the truth of the experience back to the time we are in now.

For me, the single most intensely positive experience of my life was the day I got married. You see, I had spent all of my life up to that point rather intensely miserable: Horrible childhood, terrible loss and thwarted desires. But through all that, I had maintained there was a ONE for me. I thought I had met him before Marc, and lost him. Then, I met Marc and realized the universe had not passed me over and did not work that way. Unfortunately, he was with someone else and I thought I had to let him go. When that proved to be wrong, I figured I was dreaming and when Marc proposed, I was pretty certain I really was dreaming. However, the dream was the best I had ever experienced, so I said yes. I spent the next several months waiting for that dream to shatter, yet the day came for us to give our vows to each other and Marc hadn’t disappeared.

The Big Day

We got up early that day and all dressed up for the wedding which was going to take place in my father’s rose garden, which backed onto a small evergreen forest. The officiator of our wedding was one Mr. Rosedale - perfect, huh? Marc’s Dad was doing the wedding photos (he’s very good) and my best friend who saw me through the worst of my childhood, but hadn’t been able to see for 3 years, made it to be my Maid of Honor. The wedding cake was homemade as was my bouquet. The sun was shining, roses near exhibition quality, sunbeams shining in shafts behind us through the trees: The world was reflecting the joy I felt in every part of my being.

This day did have many imperfections in it. But, on this day, the day my one true dream of uniting with my spirit, soul and physical mate was going to come true, each imperfection was a reflection of the beauty of life: Life is about flow and love, not about neatness and all things squared away. I have never found beauty in tidy boxes in which the expressions of our lives are all neatly folded away. I find beauty in the expressions of our lives determined to spill out; like the winter sweaters put away for the season and their sleeves are spilling over the edge of the box. I find this very human. When we live in accordance with life spilling over, not trying to make it conform to some preconceived notion we might have of “how things should be”, we are humane, filling ourselves with grace and compassion. The day of my marriage was like this.

The Moment of Convergence

It came time to make our vows to each other. I always knew marriage was far more than “just a piece of paper”, but I honestly had no idea of just how intense a true bonding was. Perhaps it was because we had had no rehearsals and therefore had not said the vows without meaning them the way we would during the ceremony. Perhaps it was because we had a very small wedding. Perhaps it was because we were not performing or regarding what we were doing as some ritual: We were uniting. Not just in this moment, but forever. Perhaps it was all of these combined and that is what I believe.

As soon as we began making our vows, something very powerful happened: For me, I became naked in a way I have NEVER been before or since. I have felt more “clothed” when I’ve been naked than how I felt on that day. For Marc, he never felt more powerful, complete, right, true… He said it was hard to pin down, but he was never more “himself” than when he was uniting with me in those moments.

Marc looked deeply within me to say his vows. Mr. Rosedale then had me say mine. I looked into those eyes and forgot everything Mr. Rosedale said: I moved into a moment of absolute passion and love to where Marc was. I hovered there for a moment, then fell in. But my mind remained blank in that space and I deeply wanted to say those vows because they were my part of the commitment. I had to look away, but as I did, I spoke with every fibre of my being to every fibre of Marc’s and then as he said more of his vows, I would look and fall again.

Those moments continued to flow for several hours that day before the universe took its leave to return to its “normal” flow.

The Ripples in the Pond

What happened on that day had profound effects on both of us. However, the most interesting thing for us has been that that day has remained a part of every day since: Whenever Marc looks at me and I really look at him, we fall into each other and that moment of exchanging our vows is happening again. This is not a new moment; it is the same moment happening again and again, but larger and more powerful each time.

When I said my vows, my commitment was “forever”. What this meant in my heart and head was, “for infinity and eternity”. When Marc said his, his commitment was (and I’m quoting here), “We were to be together, and that’s the way it would be, without end. Forever, if you like, but that word does not encompass what I am saying.”.

For us, our wedding day is a day that is not in the past as something we did. It is a day that we have not stopped living. It reverberates each day more loudly, if you will, than the last one. Perhaps it is because eternity touched down in the moments we committed to unity of being without end. This is the reason that we continue in those moments without end.

The only times we have had troubles in our marriage have been the times we allowed the world to distract us from our endlessness into the packages society says should be the way to experience the world. Whenever this happened, we would be lost until we came back to our moments; our place in time and space. As soon as we came back, literally within minutes misunderstandings would clear up, tensions gone and closeness would return. The trick was learning to come back together: One of us might make it, but the other would be too “beat up” from being outside our space to understand. It took a while for us to learn how simple it was and how we were getting back: We were literally remembering the moments of our vows and, as we continued remembering, we went beyond to feeling and then into those moments. Once we had this, it has been easy to maintain. In fact, it is hard NOT to: It takes an actual effort of will to come out of it, which over time has become next to impossible.

Living in the Moment

Each day we learn anew to live in that moment in different circumstances. For us, this is a way of being as well as doing. Since the moment we share was/is so profound, this is relatively easy - now that we know what we’re doing. This is what is meant by “living in the moment”. Unfortunately, most if not all the so-called experts on relationship can’t tell you why you should live in “the moment” beyond the fact that you will be happier. They are unaware of why it will make you happier. They don’t even tell you the moment you’re looking for, since they don’t know: They keep telling us that it’s the one we’re in. They don’t tell you it needs to be a positive moment, how to recognize what’s going on if it’s negative, nor do they tell you that you can create the moment in which you wish to live.

The information that’s out there keeps telling us that we are responsible for our own happiness - nobody else. If that were true, no one would need relationship. However, since the human race is pretty much built for relationship along with the rest of the universe, I would have to say that idea is wrong. A small child cannot be responsible for their own happiness since they are dependent on the parent for every aspect for their well-being. In other words, the parent is responsible for the happiness of the child. No one would really argue this, but as soon as you reach some arbitrary age someone decides is “old enough”, you are now independent of all relational need. Quite frankly, this is mentally and emotionally handicapping and explains much of what is wrong with the world.

If, on the other hand, you consider the one you love responsible for your happiness and you for theirs, you just might get somewhere. You would be able to remain open and vulnerable to each other: Messy and spilling out of your boxes and into one another, so that the two can become one, finding together a moment of eternity that belongs only to you. When you do that, 22 years (or any amount of time) is like a day, and a day is a wonderful eternity in heaven… Even when it rains.

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