RIPPLES

I have begun to think of life as a series of ripples widening out from an original center. – Seamus Heaney

Among the top million things I love about the power of words is that a single word is not singular in the meaning it holds. 

In its influence.  

In its inspiration. 

In the ripples it casts when written, read, spoken, heard. 

Meaning is found in a word through how it is threaded and weaved into words in a sentence.   

Meaning is given in how a word vibrates and reverberates among the sounds of a voice when the speaker chooses which words to stitch together before the tones they select echo into another’s ears.     

How a word is threaded into the seam of a sentence has the power to create a design in another’s mind. 

Further meaning is given to a word from one’s starting place through the words they already gathered and associated meaning to.  This starting place determines how words are heard when cast at them.

A word can deepen in its meaning over time.   Through generations.   Through perceptions.  

A word can hold great meaning through its ability to connect.  Isolation decreases in direct proportion to increased belonging.   A word can close the gap between not fitting in and knowing commonality. 

Sometimes a word strengthens and deepens in a meaningful way it was ingested by the person who grabbed a hold of it and internalized it into recesses of their heart so as not to lose the feelings that the word stirred.   

A word’s meaning can bind.   To a sense of control.   To hope.   To Faith.   To affirm.  To commitment.   To a reason to change.   To a reason to keep the same.   

A word’s meaning can evolve, traced back through translation.  Through origin.   Through interpretation.   

Take the word unconditional.  

Thread and weave it with the word love.

Cast ripples from its combination.

Words are not singular in the meaning they hold.  

Because none of us are singular in how we hear and see.   Nor do we stand in the same pair of shoes at the same starting line.      

If I look up the definition of unconditional love, besides finding 374,000 results per google, I read the words showing love for another person without considering how it will benefit you or what you will get in return. (extracted from verywellmind.com)

I’ve tended to think of unconditional love as not having conditions in which someone receives love.   I’ve often given meaning to these two words stitched together with the thought that it is a pure love to strive for, one in which things like frustration or anger don’t exist. 

I’ve held onto the meaning I’ve given to unconditional love through the weaved together words and vibrating sounds of veteran voices sharing their stories of their service dogs.  These amazing cold noses and pawed feet souls who aid veterans in healing on their journeys with pain, trauma, sorrow, despair, and grief because these fur souls do not judge, and they accept a veteran in totality.  Every word that comprises a veteran’s lived story, making a veteran all that they are as a human being, is held in love without condition in the eyes and ears – and heart – of a service dog. 

Like the quote by an unknown author reads I aspire to be the person my dog thinks I am.   My mind’s starting place has woven unconditional love into the seam of this sentence. 

Recently, while in dialogue with someone very dear to my life, I had an ah-ha about my framed meaning of unconditional love.   I saw and saw again the meaning I had been giving these two words.   I saw where unconditional love has the ability to be the most present when what is most present is a reason to feel conditional.   When imperfection is front and center, unconditional love is center stage.  

I think about the girls.  (If you have been reading other Blueprints, you know the girls are aka for Ginger and Kutana, two cold noses and pawed feet unconditionally loving souls who, by the way, also happen to always supervise when a Blueprints post is being written.  Like now, one to my left and other on my right side.)   

Unconditionally loving they both are.  

Non-stop, true.  Certainly their I love you eyes are present when I am rubbing a belly or scratching a neck or grabbing a blanket to cover them up.   Or best of all to them, when I am reaching for a treat that will soon be theirs. 

But, even more, how quickly they let go, move on, forgive and forget if they are corrected or told no.   For a very split-second Kutana might not appreciate the moment I am redirecting her insistence to use her extremely gifted nose to investigate where the geese have been because I am not in sync with her thoughts that what the geese have left behind is edible candy.   Or Ginger might not appreciate the moment I am unable to honor the royalty in her because getting her body wet in the rain is a must since her lavatory is outdoors. 

For dogs, what is present in the boundary or the requirement is unwavering love, love that will not gain a condition because of a temporary undesired course-correction.  

What doesn’t ever erode is love.      

I like this visual.   Within each of us humans are this jumbled mixture of messiness, like the clump of roots in the sand.   But deep down, underneath what we can’t see is a spool from which all threads originate. 

Or a chime from which all sounds begin.      

A center from which all things ripple and cascade downward and outward.  Cascading into every moment for what we decide to stitch and weave and vibrate and reverberate together.  

Through the power of our words we write, speak, read, hear. 

That center deep down referred to as our souls.  

That part of us that is born of nothing but pure   

Love.