Tonia Davenport

Tasting the Contents

Imagine you are . . .well . . . you and your life is this mason jar, filled with what look like shiny, round balls. You are certain these must be assorted chocolate cordials, though you can’t be sure because the jar has always been tightly sealed. You’ve often looked long and hard at the jar, imagining how sweet and luscious the liquid centers to the shiny balls must be. While you’ve longed to actually test your theory and have a taste of the candy, you haven’t because the seal on the lid has always been so tight. You’ve just come to accept that the contents are for gazing at/dreaming about only and are not meant to actually be sampled.

But one day you start to acquire a real sweet tooth and it has you wondering about the actual taste of those candies inside the jar more than ever. This craving intensifies day by day until eventually it becomes all-consuming and getting at the candy inside is all you can think about. It suddenly dawns on you that there may be more than one way to release the jar’s contents.

You could break it.

This thought is very disconcerting because you are not one for breaking things. In fact, you are incredibly uncomfortable with destruction of any kind; it’s just not in your makeup. But the longing to test out the sweetness of the contents is so strong that your find yourself almost involuntarily nudging the jar inch by inch toward the edge of the shelf, until one day the jar is just teetering on the edge. You take a deep breath and with one large exhale you knock the jar off of the shelf.

In

slow

motion,

the jar

falls to the tile floor below

and shatters.

Your greatest fear has been manifested—your life appears broken and in many pieces on the floor. Broken.

The pace speeds back up to real time.

You fly into action, scrambling to keep the bouncing shiny balls from scattering away. Your arms are going in every direction and you can’t seem to work fast enough to stop the crazy bouncing. Your feet and hands are cut by the glass and the pain starts manifesting as you struggle to contain the candied contents. Eventually the balls quit bouncing and rolling and you think you probably gathered most of the pieces up, though it’s probable some will be lost forever. But most of the candy sits now in one pile with the broken pieces of glass—some of each, spotted with crimson blood. You pause in a moment of shock and are still. Then, you remember the motive you had just seconds ago (was it really only seconds? It seems like days.) You remember you were craving the rich chocolate, the sweet, flowing-liquid centers.

You reach down, pick up a ball and put it in your mouth. It’s as sweet and sumptuous as you had always imagined it would be, but a shard of glass that had stuck to the ball cuts your tongue. It’s OK. From here, you know that the remaining cordials can gently be wiped clean, the broken glass swept up and discarded. And while the clean-up process will be tedious and painful (you’re bound to cut yourself a few more times), you are encouraged by what you’ve now tasted and you know how sweet the contents of your life really are, and you intend to devour each piece with passion.

It's like that.

Perfectly Imperfect Love

You may think I spend an awful lot of time on the concept of “love.” I’ll admit, I [heart] LOVE and am one of those sappy types who really and truly believes that love conquers all and yes, love IS the answer. It really is the answer. Sometimes that means loving yourself; sometimes that means loving another; sometimes it means indirectly loving others by loving a cause or being passionate about something you’re good at, which, in the end makes the world a better place for having your contribution in it. Sometimes love is easy. Simple and uncomplicated and easy and obvious. More often than not, however (at least in my personal existence), love is often sloppy, awkward and clumsy.

I’m learning more and more that pure love starts at our very core with loving ourselves. Once we are full-up, love just naturally spews out to those around us and really is offered up with very little effort. It’s when we’re not full-up that the pureness of love can be a bit diluted. That doesn’t mean it’s not still good or that we shouldn’t make an attempt to share it, but the thing is, when love is given without there being a surplus (meaning you had to withdraw from your account—the account which should have a surplus in it because you have loved yourself entirely first, so there wasn’t already “extra” that was burning a hole in your pocket), then you are left with a need for your funds to be replenished, and, unfortunately, this usually means than while we think we’re giving freely, the fact remains we are giving but expecting something in return—large or small. It’s just natural. But when you reach a place where love is pure and you have absolutely no need or expectation of any kind of reciprocation, the freedom that exists there is pure bliss and naturally adds to the surplus. Am I making any sense? It means that when you are so full that love just spurts out of you here and there, there is no fear of what someone’s reaction might be to your love (that stops us often, doesn’t it?) because you have no need of their approval. You can feel completely at peace because you know sharing love can never be the “inappropriate” or “weird” or whatever thing to do. How many times have you resented or been offended by someone sharing pure love with you? I’m guessing not too often, if ever. And if you have by some remarkable chance not appreciated it, I would venture to say it’s an invitation to look internally as to why.

This brings me to say that we should never hold back. I experienced one of those events this week that you’ve heard about a thousand times: “Never refrain from telling someone you love them, because you never know when it may be the last time.” Are you rolling your eyes? We may all roll our eyes until it really happens to us. Luckily for me, “it” turned out not to be the last time (this time), and I was given another chance to share the love that’s in my heart for this person, so I did--as quickly as I could.

Trying to show those you love how much you love them will never be perfect. You will always wonder what you could have done better or if you should have tried harder. Love is messy. But while you’ve heard these messages a thousand times, they bear repeating. Love yourself. Love freely. Love yourself. The only time you may regret telling someone you love them is if, in fact, you don’t. If your love is honest, the only regret you may have is having not said anything at all.