I did not turn on a light in the dark hallway last night and  scraped the back of my hand pretty hard against a door knob (ouch!). My automatic response was to put my hand to my mouth and hold it against my lips. I naturally kissed the boo-boo, as my mother had done when I was a child, applying love to a wound.

Children know that the kiss may be a distraction, but the love overrides the fear, and minimizes the trauma; the carelessness of our self, or another. Loving a wound eases the pain, by acknowledging it. It also establishes connection.

As an “adult,” I have often tried to ignore pain, curse it, or minimize it.  I mean, who needs it? But obviously I need, from time to time; to be shaken up, stunned and otherwise awakened to carelessness, usually because I’m hiding from something, some fear I don’t want to have to love. That’s scary stuff.

It’s easier to just keep injuring an old familiar wound that’s never been kissed, than to face it, forgive my carelessness, kiss it with compassion, and allow it to heal completely. I can analyze endlessly all the bits of past story stored to explain and justify the wound that caused the pain that I’ve “learned to live with.”  But love doesn’t need to understand the reasons; it just wants to love.

The metaphorical Band-aids I’ve used to cover-up fears have been stripped off in San Miguel to expose some inner places that need love. I’ve had to acknowledge and forgive myself for continuing to rewound old pains, until I could finally ignore them no longer… part of being a human!

No matter where I think love originates, I possess it in and for my own self; the ideas and the feelings reside within this mind and body, which is all I can control. The extent to which I seek and accept the love I am capable of evoking for this being I call me, is the extent to which I am discovering a new level of acceptance and peace. I sense that what comes with this freedom from fear to accept love more fully, is the joyful aliveness of the responsibility for it.

So, tonight, alone, (with no one to complain to), I was pleased to see that my natural response to my physical pain was to love it, to apply a strong kiss. I smiled to myself for not turning on the light, which was the obvious and smart thing to do; and so I was careless, reckless even, with my own wellbeing. And then, in yet another gesture of self-love, I sat down to write because writing, for me, is a practice that is full of care, and through which I want to explore and honor the ways I see myself and others waking up to love.

I hope that we all, more often, remember to turn on the light and kiss our boo-boos with affection and compassion.