Unseen BEAUTY of Everyday LOVE — Transcript

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1. 0:00Well, what is love?
2. 0:13What is love Antony? What is love?
3. 0:15This is about as good as it gets.
4. 0:21And it seems to get better as we get older.
5. 0:24But there will probably be a tipping point
6. 0:28where we don’t know what’s going to happen
7. 0:31and we’ll just have to be willing to slide together
8. 0:35down some slippery slope.
9. 0:52When we got married we worked out a series of vows
10. 0:58which we wrote out and we said to each other.
11. 1:02I can’t really remember what they were
12. 1:06except that it was something like
13. 1:11that we hope one day we will sit here in our old age
14. 1:16still together and just enjoy this life that we’ve been given.
15. 1:35Maybe we do need to renew our vows
16. 1:37so that we remember what we said.
17. 1:40But the one that stands out quite strongly
18. 1:42which I feel we’re embodying now is,
19. 1:45‘May our home be a place where people can accept themselves.’
20. 1:50Which, when we drew that up, was a beautiful intention
21. 1:55and I feel like we’re really living that.
22. 2:03The other was that we don’t hide behind each other.
23. 2:08That we have our own identity and are at one with ourselves.
24. 2:15That we’re not hiding behind another person
25. 2:19or expecting them to fulfil what is important to us.
26. 2:34What is often hard to accept when you live so much inside yourself
27. 2:40is that the person in front of you is very different to you.
28. 2:48I think in a marriage that’s the hardest thing...
29. 2:50to realise that some of the differences
30. 2:55that you fell in love with in the beginning
31. 2:57are the things that bug you later.
32. 3:01I’ve seen that in myself and with others.
33. 3:05So those are the little daily things
34. 3:11that need to be communicated and sat down and made a compromise.
35. 3:27I see that if I leave the butter out after I make toast
36. 3:31that my wife is furious... daily.
37. 3:37Then I think the one way I can show a commitment to the relationship
38. 3:42is to either not have toast at all,
39. 3:47or to have toast without butter,
40. 3:49or to put the butter away.
41. 3:53And I don’t have to talk to her about it,
42. 3:56I don’t have to be analytical about it,
43. 3:59you know, one picks it up.
44. 4:01And of course there are things I do that will infuriate her
45. 4:06that I don’t pick up.
46. 4:08She’ll tell me...
47. 4:10she’s not scared of me in that way.
48. 4:21If I look back, there are stages in a married life.
49. 4:29There’s the initial excitement of being together.
50. 4:35And then of course the utter astonishment of having children.
51. 4:40That was just wonderful, beyond measure.
52. 4:52Sometimes it was really hard work.
53. 4:57We had to earn a living.
54. 5:01I had to travel to work.
55. 5:05There were times we had to be apart, times we came together.
56. 5:12And we didn’t resist it or complain... we just did it.
57. 5:18And in retrospect that doing of it
58. 5:22was a wonderful cementing of the relationship.
59. 5:35Since then I’ve stopped travelling.
60. 5:43We spend all our time together now, pretty much.
61. 5:47We sleep together, we eat together, we drink together.
62. 5:52And it’s wonderful and there’s a whole new adjustment that happens.
63. 5:58And I think that’s really precious.
64. 6:01People talk about it’s difficult when your children leave home...
65. 6:06of course our children have left home long ago...
66. 6:09but for us it’s been wonderful.
67. 6:12We’ve had time on our own
68. 6:14and we make as much use of it as we can.
69. 6:32I think it’s very important to find something
70. 6:35when your children leave home,
71. 6:37that the two of you do together that is meaningful
72. 6:40and nourishing to both of you.
73. 6:49When I look around at my family and my friends,
74. 6:52that’s often when couples go different ways.
75. 6:56Then one feels that you’re living two separate lives.
76. 7:02And it’s very difficult to find a place of connection
77. 7:07because your priorities have been work, or children, or both.
78. 7:16And now none of those are something that you share anymore.
79. 7:26I never give advice...
80. 7:30I wouldn’t take it anyway.
81. 7:32But for us, what’s really helped was having, as Margie says,
82. 7:38not only a common direction in our life
83. 7:42but a sense that we actually deliberately
84. 7:46do things together that are meaningful to us.
85. 7:59Every night we gather around sunset
86. 8:04and we watch the sun go down.
87. 8:12In a sense, ritual in that way was always a part of our life.
88. 8:18So we always have watched the sun go down.
89. 8:22It was always important for us.
90. 8:25And when the children were younger they would join us.
91. 8:30And now that they’re not here
92. 8:33we sit together and we talk about them all the time.
93. 8:39Not all the time darling.
94. 8:41But it’s quite a deliberate, ritualised part of the day.
95. 8:47So we make it precious, I think that’s what we try and do.
96. 8:54And it does become precious.
97. 8:56Not so much because we set out to make something precious
98. 9:01but we decided how we wanted to spend that time together.
99. 9:07And it turned out to be precious, which is wonderful.
100. 9:28I feel quite strongly, growing older,
101. 9:33that however much I look back to
102. 9:36a more romantic postcard version of what life could be
103. 9:44that something fantastically, wonderfully ordinary has taken its place.
104. 10:01Ordinary is extraordinary.
105. 10:05If you think of your life, it’s the little things,
106. 10:08the ordinary little things,
107. 10:11that are very meaningful and you don’t forget them.
108. 10:15Little kindnesses, little actions
109. 10:18that you don’t expect to happen, are the ordinary.
110. 10:29And I think one of the most ordinary things
111. 10:31that we humans are made to do
112. 10:34is to be present and listen to each other.
113. 10:37And I think it’s only when we stop
114. 10:41that we see the extraordinary in the ordinary,
115. 10:45when we really stop and feel and hear.
116. 11:14In the same way that the leaves change in spring and fall in autumn
117. 11:21and that certain birds appear at certain times of the year
118. 11:25and the sun comes and the wind goes...
119. 11:28all of that is part of my life.
120. 11:33And she is absolutely, intimately as much a part of it as all of that.
121. 11:43I live in the veld (nature) and my wife.
122. 11:47That’s how it feels.
123. 11:49I’m so pleased you live in me.
124. 11:52I’d like to think that she feels something of the same.
125. 11:58There’s a sense of almost the inevitability of
126. 12:02looking around and finding you here next to me
127. 12:05in the same way that I lift the blind in the morning
128. 12:09and see the sun come up.
129. 12:11That has been a discovery for me that I did not anticipate.
130. 12:18And I wish it for everybody.
131. 12:23And I think if one gives oneself a chance
132. 12:26it will appear all by itself.
133. 12:36If I look over one day and she’s not there, it will be heartbreaking.
134. 12:41That’s absolutely true.
135. 12:47I will then as best I can
136. 12:51honour the life that we’ve had together.
137. 13:03She is my life
138. 13:08and my life will continue.
139. 13:11Saying ‘she is my life’ doesn’t mean
140. 13:15that I have no life without her.
141. 13:18Saying ‘she is my life’ means that
142. 13:23when she’s with me, it’s full of her.
143. 13:28It means that when she dies and I’m still around
144. 13:33that my life will consist of whatever there is around me.
145. 13:39And that almost my duty to her
146. 13:46would be to live that life as best as I can.
147. 13:52As she mentioned, we undertook not to hide behind each other,
148. 13:59that I only live through you.
149. 14:02I live through you, but that’s just the beginning, it’s not the end.
150. 14:07So that when you die I’ll weep,
151. 14:10I’ll build you a fantastic grave overlooking the hills,
152. 14:15and we’ll have sirens and choirs of angels all over the place.
153. 14:21And then I’ll play music with the angels.
154. 14:26That’s how it feels to me.
155. 14:30And I’m not looking forward to it.
156. 14:33It sounds like you are... the choir of angels.
157. 14:37Shall I bring them on now?
158. 14:50I think the way I would honour her
159. 14:52would be to get on with the life that is left for me.
160. 14:57That’s what she would wish for me, more than anything.
161. 15:03She would want me to see the sun come up,
162. 15:10to dig in the garden,
163. 15:12to look after visitors,
164. 15:14to make the bed properly at last.
165. 15:22But I think that she would trust me
166. 15:25that however sad it was
167. 15:28that sadness would become my life
168. 15:31and would be manure for whatever last days are left
169. 15:39which are probably not going to be very many.
170. 15:45But that would be a huge event for me.
171. 15:59I’ve got a little poem that I’d like to recite if I may?
172. 16:07I’ll try and remember it.
173. 16:12I shaved my head for the children of Palestine.
174. 16:19I swept up the leaves in the Jewish cemetery.
175. 16:28My wife wrapped presents for the old ladies in the frail care home.
176. 16:40My daughter washed the dishes after lunch.
177. 16:49The Buddha of Compassion has 84 000 hands.
178. 16:59Which of those are yours?