I talked in my previous blog about love and relationship, particularly the chemistry of falling in love and what happens as the familiarity and routine of togetherness  gradually takes over from that first flush of intense excitement.

Some lucky couples and will tell you, hand on heart, that they’ve never had an argument in the whole of their life together.  Heartwarming - but how often do you hear it said?  You can grade disagreements, can’t you?  From differences of opinion, to bickering and stand-offs, all the way to full-scale blazing rows, with one or both parties slamming doors and storming off, maybe to return with no determination to resolve the conflict - stuck in a mindset of hurt pride and self-justification - no conclusion, communication nil and the home heavy with atmosphere.  Evidently, no way to break the impasse.  Well, actually there is.

I’ve been thinking a lot about relationship - particularly the primary relationship in our lives.  If we haven’t got one, we want it.  If we have one, it doesn’t take long before our ego boundaries snap back out of that gorgeous, fuzziness the chemical hit of being in love creates, into the harsh glare of reality.  During the first flush of attraction, our ego boundaries merge, so that we stop feeling like ‘you’ and ‘me’ and start feeling like ‘we’. This is the time when you feel you’ve met the love of your life who understands you better than anyone else on earth - your dream partner.

Ever heard the expression ‘Where there is the most resistance, there is the greatest need for change’ … and how does that resonate with you?

I thought so.  However advanced we are on the long, hard road to enlightenment, we will inevitably bump up against that stubborn streak of resistance inside us, like a naughty child, that says, “No, not doing it.  Don’t want to.  Why should I?  Shan’t!  So there!”  

I was having a conversation about age today and how being conscious of our age profoundly affects our behaviour. 

We are living through fast-moving and very image-conscious times - more than ever before.  How we look, present ourselves to the world and behave with and towards one another seems now to outweigh the value of our internal life.

I’m sitting in the garden enjoying the sunshine on a frankly surprisingly beautiful Bank Holiday Monday … British readers will understand my amazement at the weather! The honeybees are hard at work amongst the lavender, completely immersed in their task as they hover from flower to flower - no Bank Holiday for them - and as I watch, two things spring to mind.

“Sometimes living feels like a heavy responsibility” is what I found myself saying to someone today … and it had never occurred to me before.