Living with a passionate man
Sounds amazing hey…like every girls dream. But what if the man you live with is passionate about his vision to change the world? “Oh ….” you say. When you read the title of this blog you thought "wow to live with a man whose passion and love for me overflows from him like a deep well of desire. That would be a dream come true"... right? Sorry guys that is not the case in my household. Add 3 little girls under 6 to the equation and passionate love goes on an extended holiday, loses its passport and decides to pitch its tent on the tropical island of your dreams. That sounds awful you say? Well to be honest, marriage with kids does look a little different to how I envisaged it as a dreamy teenager.
When I was single in my late twenties I was addicted to Tarot readings, Osho’s Zen tarot to be specific. Some mornings I’d ask the tarot whether to have porridge or a smoothie for brekkie. More often than not the card The Dream would pop up. The card’s full description is below if you relate, otherwise the basic jist of it is that no prince charming is going to come save us and make us happy. That job is all ours.
[Some enchanted evening you're going to meet your soul mate, the perfect person who will meet all your needs and fulfill all your dreams. Right? Wrong! This fantasy that songwriters and poets are so fond of perpetuating has its roots in memories of the womb, where we were so secure and "at one" with our mothers; it's no wonder we have hankered to return to that place all our lives. But, to put it quite brutally, it is a childish dream. And it's amazing we hang on to it so stubbornly in the face of reality. Nobody, whether it's your current mate or some dreamed-of partner in the future, has any obligation to deliver your happiness on a platter--nor could they even if they wanted to. Real love comes not from trying to solve our neediness by depending on another, but by developing our own inner richness and maturity. Then we have so much love to give that we naturally draw lovers towards us.]
So I guess it was foretold that I would meet a man whose passionate vision extended past my worldly charms. On an every day level living with a passionate man (like mine) looks a little like this. He gets up at 6am (its still dark at the moment). He gets the baby and throws her in bed with me so we can both squeeze a few more precious minutes of sleep out of the morning. He throws down some breakfast and is out the door not long after the big girls (5 and 6) get up and we emerge from our morning snooze snuggles. He spends the day running his Landscaping business. He comes home around 5/5:30 for dinner and to help get the girls wrangled into bed. Then just as I’m ready for a cosy couch snuggle and a shared episode of Game of Thrones, he announces he’s off to his workshop to keep working on his prototype. You see we tried the thing where he gave up his day job and spent a year pursuing his passion but sadly we nearly went broke. So now he squeezes it in at night and on weekends.
Even though he is exhausted he pushes on because he has a vision and a dream that is so close he can almost touch it. I’ll be honest, more often that not when he heads off and I’m left alone on the couch again after child-wrangling all day. I’m pissed off and I’m feeling kind of rejected. Where is my prince charming and why can’t he just have a normal day job?
Lucky for me I have my own passion. So sometimes I get off the couch and start choreographing a new dance or listening to inspiring music. I give thanks for these moments of time when I can focus on what makes me happy and how I can use it to help other people find their happiness. But also to remember who I am outside of this crazy motherhood ride.
Which brings me back to Osho Zen Tarot and the other card that seems to pop up for me – Friendliness.
[The branches of these two flowering trees are intertwined, and their fallen petals blend together on the ground in their beautiful colors. It is as if heaven and earth are bridged by love. But they stand individually, each rooted in the soil in their own connection with the earth. In this way they represent the essence of true friends, mature, easy with each other, natural. There is no urgency about their connection, no neediness, no desire to change the other into something else. This card indicates a readiness to enter this quality of friendliness. In the passage, you may notice that you are no longer interested in all kinds of dramas and romances that other people are engaged in. It is not a loss. It is the birth of a higher, more loving quality born of the fullness of experience. It is the birth of a love that is truly unconditional, without expectations or demands.]
So there we are, my passionate man and me standing strong in our roots but allowing our branches and leaves to mingle and intertwine in our friendship. I’m helping him now two days a week with his business and planning a crowd funding campaign for later in the year and to be honest, I can’t count the amount of times he’s pressed play on my iPod at my gigs.
So speaking of passion, there I was just the other day in a marketing meeting and someone asked him to tell his story. Although I have heard it a million times, on this day it finally sunk it. The next level of his vision was revealed to me. It’s about restoring the natural order of things bringing ecosystems back into our lives and specifically into our backyards. He said when we repopulate our gardens with natives and food gardens the animals come back (all sorts of species of birds, insects and lizards). Aquaponics is an easy way to do this because it is in itself an ecosystem.
He also said that children have an innate sense about their environment and providing them with this reconnection is how he sees we will change the world. In the way we think, eat and act towards one another. I can see it in my kids, who are all completely different; when they are in the garden they are connected to all of it, the plants, animals, insects, each other and us. Hearing Adam speak about his dream I think I fell in love with him just a little bit more and if he pulls this off, it might just make all those nights home alone worth it.
