Although I’m still in the midst of my intentional self-imposed exile from most internet communications and people in general for transformative and creative purposes, I have temporarily “logged back on” because of a pressing need to unravel my thoughts surrounding some recent extraordinary events that have focused my thinking on "matters of the heart".    Stream of conscious writing - in search of real time release, real time remix.  

I will tell you my thoughts are racing all over as I sit down to write this - back only 20 minutes in my home again after five long heart-wrenching days away from NYC.  In that span I temporarily lost for moments one of the closest people in the world to me to cardiac arrest who miraculously made it back.  Then two uncles were admitted to the hospital on the same evening and later discovered they each needed pacemakers.  Still, another favorite friend of mine experienced a successful heart procedure just today and returned home sooner than expected.  While I can’t even begin to communicate, with a perspective I trust yet, what the last several days have been like - I can say with painstaking confidence that it really is the heart that connects us to life.  

While those closest to me, blood and otherwise, navigate maintaining a connection to life even as I write this - I am reminded how precious is the opportunity to love someone, for even another 60 seconds.  

When that fragile line between life and physical death is threatened, you are gifted with an immediate awareness of what is important.  The past, grudges and all the stupid things you allow to disturb your energy on any given day simply fall away - on the instant.  You suddenly remember our most overwhelming desire and basic need as human beings in a physical body is to feel love: the experience of expressing it, the experience of receiving it.

While I held my breath - and family and closest friend’s - hostage to my suffocating anxiety inside an hour that felt like a century waiting to learn if my "first love" was going to pull through late last week, I begged God (as I had years ago while waiting to find out if Ed was okay) for one more opportunity to express my love to him.  I begged for the opportunity to share at least one more time with my high school sweetheart colorful conversations and stories about all the ties - good, bad and otherwise - that have bound our hearts together for over two decades now.  This time my prayers were answered and I re-committed with a fever this weekend to an agreement that I’d made with myself after Ed’s murder 9 years ago.  

The agreement, committed to paper back then read:
I will conduct my life as if this very moment is the only one I have; I will quit banking on tomorrow to live my heart’s desires.  I will be, give, feel, pursue all that I desire to experience right now inside this moment, for it’s the only moment that I can fully engage.  I will love out loud all those that mean anything to me - for love unexpressed is meaningless.

Tonight, I remind myself and any who read this that tomorrow is not guaranteed, the past can’t be relived, and occasionally endings show up unannounced and un-welcomed.  Don't accumulate regrets over things you wish you'd said or done, apologies you never got around to making, people you missed the chance to forgive.  

Be here for the moments now; recognize and embrace the exquisite opportunity to love for just another minute.  For when our individual hearts eventually beat for the last time, it seems to me there will be no greater accomplishment than to ease on out of the world knowing we spoke often and deeply the priceless language of the heart - love.  Love, love, love!

I give thanks to God for the gift of love.