My sweetie is taking a day trip tomorrow, so today, I filled the gas tank and drove through the car wash. This was done quite deliberately as an act of love, as are many of the little things I do for him, and he does for me. I imagined him enjoying the morning through a nice clean windshield, and getting on the road a little earlier by not having to stop by the gas station. The chore was thus a delayed reaction air kiss, a good shoulder squeeze, delivered through the intermediary of the car.
There are many ways of pleasing the ones we love, and most of them are far more glamorous than doing their chores and running their errands. I’m a huge fan of the more colorful ways of showing affection, mind you, but I’d like to take a moment here to celebrate the humble act of service.
When we’re young and healthy, with few responsibilities, this sort of affection doesn’t seem very important, or it didn’t to me. I barely noticed the things others did for me. When I became a mother, and then a single mother, however, I came to appreciate them much more. When you’re too busy, with too many responsibilities and worries, you come to yearn for someone to share the burdens, and things like candy and flowers, while nice, can come to seem almost insulting in their irrelevance to the overwhelming reality of the moment. Someone who will change your oil, now, that’s a hottie worth hanging onto! Someone who will take a little of the burden leaves you freer to experience some pleasure in its stead.
Today, my life is much less stressful, mainly because of my thoughtful sweetie, but I still have an almost erotic appreciation of the little acts of service, both the giving and the receiving. What I’m coming to realize is that it’s not only the body that we can please; it’s the entirety of our loved one’s reality.
Everything we experience comes to us through our nervous system. Loving kindness of all sorts provides us with pleasure. Overwork, stress and unkindness create pain. When someone relieves us of a chore, they are not only taking away a little of our stress and giving us some extra space to enjoy pleasure, they are also giving the gift of their mindfulness to our needs and our feelings.
Provided there is balance in the relationship, the loop closes nicely; there is pleasure in the giving as well as the receiving. It feels very good to do things for someone who is good to you.
So the next time you’re the one doing the dishes or picking up the dry cleaning, try to think of it as a caress. Because it certainly can be. It’s certainly more fun and pleasurable to think of it that way, and if you’re imaginative enough about it, you can even allow the mundane chores of the day to be a nice build-up to the other activities that are more likely to be come to mind when we think of “acts of love.”
