Day 16... all you need is love.

Women's magazines, movies, TV shows all tell 'us' that what we really need is the new 'It Bag', the LBD, the perfect shoe (why are shoes always described in the singular?), thin thighs, expensive wrinkle cream and the newest colour lippie.  So the question is... do we really?

I've been thinking a lot about resilience lately.  As we watch large swathes of our beautiful country be swallowed by flood waters - destroying all in 'its' path - I've been thinking about what builds spirit, what 'love' actually means and how people pick themselves up and just keep on keeping on?

The river at the bottom of our 'garden' was flooded yesterday.  At around four times its usual width, the water rushed past, taking trees and soil and, no doubt, native animals with it.  While we were in no danger, it was frightening at times and I was relieved to see it back to normal this morning.  Watching the water yesterday, however, I thought about what it must have been like for the mother who's baby was ripped from her arms?  Even typing this, I am teary and can't get that family out of my mind.  I know what it is like to lose a baby - my heart is re-breaking for that woman and her family.  How do you pick yourself up after that?

While I type this, I'm listening to The Beatles 'All You Need Is Love'.  I'm not a Beatles fan (in the mainstream sense) but really like this song - made popular again by the movie 'Love Actually' (one of my favourite films).  If you listen to the words (and I thoroughly recommend that you do), it is clear that John Lennon et al were onto something here.  'Love' is really all you need.  Whether love is found in the arms of a desired one, or complete strangers arriving with buckets to clean out your flooded house?  Or whether it is found when an inspirational female Premier cracks during a press briefing and shows her vulnerability in an overwhelming situation?  Or whether love is found weeding the garden with your children and hosing each other down afterward?.  Or, in fact, a wonderful friend promising to keep you stocked with essential make-up items during a year of 'no shopping'.  It really is... all you need!  Well, its all I need... or so I am working out.

I am so unbelievably lucky.  In this lifetime (and yes, I do believe in reincarnation, of sorts), I have such amazing love around me.  An amazing, unbelieveable, loving husband, a family who are just 'there' even though we are so different, friends who are so solid I sometimes wonder what they are made from.  Is this what makes me resilient to hurt and pain and crisis?  I think it might be? 

Clearly I'm just working out some of this 'stuff' and I don't have the answers.  I do have an understanding, though, that its about the process... not the answer or outcome. It is the thinking, the philosophising, the musing that makes it understandable... and then, in a flash, it morphs into something else, something deeper and my understanding is brought to another level.