LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Mike Birbiglia!

The gas station horse

Dear Lovelets,

Years ago, a friend told me a story about a big trip he and his wife had taken to Disney World with their five-year-old boy. Never having had the chance to go to Disney when they themselves were children, they wanted to give their only child the experience of a lifetime. They’d saved money for months for the trip, and taken time off from work, and then dealt with the excruciating spring-break traffic heading south to Florida. Once they got to Disney World, they made sure their little boy had every adventure a child could ever want — wearing everyone out in the process — and then they had to go deal with the spring-break traffic heading back home.

Once they got home (exhausted and broke) they asked their son what his favorite part of Disney World had been.

He said, “riding the horse.”

Puzzled, they thought through every ride at Disney World, trying to remember which one had involved a horse — but there hadn’t been any horses, at least as far as they could recall. They told him that he was surely mistaken, but he insisted: no, the best part of Disney World was definitely riding the horse! The horse! The wonderful horse!

They kept grilling him about this mystery until finally they solved it: at the gas station ten miles from their house, at the very beginning of their road trip, there had been one of those old-fashioned, child-sized, mechanical plastic horses that you put a quarter into, and put a kid on top of, and the thing bounces around for a minute or so.

Their son had loved it. He actually got to ride the horse TWICE! It was amazing!

They could have turned the car around after the gas station horse and come right home, and saved a heap of time and money, and their son would’ve already had the best adventure of his life.

“It’s the little things,” people say — and they say it so often that it has become a cliché.

But what if it’s true?

What if it is, in fact, the little things that matter?

What if it’s ONLY the little things?

Our special guest this week is the inimitable comedian (and writer, and director, and actor) Mike Birbiglia, who was not at all sure that he wanted to do a letter from Love when I first asked him about it last year. He wasn’t sure he understood the assignment, or if Unconditional Love would have anything to say to him. But he gave it a shot, and Love showed up. As it does. And what it wanted him to know is this: it doesn’t get better than the little things.

What about you, Lovelets? What little things does the Spirit of Unconditional Love (what we call SOUL around these parts) want you to notice?

Where is beauty hiding in plain sight?

Look closer . . .

What is your gas station horse?

Onward, gently —
Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know about appreciating the little things?

Oh blossom, only a confused human mind would think that the little things are little things. As so often, innocent one, you’ve got it all twisted and backwards. What you think of as big things are actually little things. And as for what you call the little things? Well, dear girl, they are everything.

Think of all that you went through with Rayya in the last 18 months of her life — the love, the passion, the rage and outrage, the howling loss. Think of all the countries that the two of you visited together, and the bucket list adventures you shared, and the books you helped each other write, and the people you met, and the art you made, together and separately. Seven years after her death, what do you miss most? What is your most cherished memory of Rayya Elias?

I know what it is. You know what it is.

Going to the Target in Phillipsburg, New Jersey with her, all those times. All those afternoons. At Target.

All those bucket list adventures the two of you went on in the last year of her life, trying to fill whatever remaining days you had with one peak experience after another — all the traveling; the deep spiritual conversations; the weeping and the riotous laughter; the sunsets you tried not to miss; the words of love you begged each other never to forget; the effort to write and record as many songs as possible; all the literal sex, drugs and rock and roll that you tried to cram into every moment you had left . . . and in the end, again, what is it that you miss most about Rayya? Target! Just this: her rolling up in your driveway on a regular Tuesday afternoon, to go to Target, so you could buy toilet paper and coffee pods. When you were friends. When you were just friends, who loved to be together, and that is all.

Is it possible nothing ever got better than that?

Might be.

What would you give for one more trip to Target with your friend Rayya?

A price beyond rubies, dear love. A price beyond rubies.

Now listen.

What are you gonna do, babe?

What can you do about the way you are, the way she was, the way most everyone is?

You have got an ambitious mind and a hungry spirit. It’s your human nature to always chase adventure and novelty, and, as you heard someone say in the rooms of 12-step once, your favorite word has always been “more.” You want the bigger thing, the shinier thing, the next thing, the new thing.

That’s just what you’re like.

It’s okay. It’s okay.

We want you to know something: we love you. Do you hear us? WE LOVE YOU. We love you. We love you. We love you exactly as you are, and we’re not going to ask you to change the way you are, because that’s not likely to happen, and anyway love never asks anyone to change. And as your dear Brazilian ex-husband used to say, “a crooked banana never grows straight,” which we guess is just an interesting way to say a leopard never changes its spots?

Sweetheart, our dear crooked banana, be who you are. Aim big. Try hard. Make things. Be ambitious. Go to all the places. Feel all the feelings. Shoot for all the stars.

But baby, if you ever think that anything out there in the world will be better than doing something you enjoy with a friend you like, then I’ve got news for you: it doesn’t get better than that.

Going to Target with Rayya. Going to coffee with Leah. Dinner at Margaret’s. Breakfast with Jennie. Swimming with Sherry. Walking with Cree. Going to Costco with Cat. Sitting on the grass with Suleika and the dogs. Watching Bojack Horseman with Shankari. Getting a bagel with Katie. Picking up Susie at the airport. Watching the deer and the birds from Barb’s porch. Sprawled out on a couch doing nothing at all with Ruby, Marty, Roey, Sister G, Abby . . .

These love stories — these friendships, these little nothing moments — this is the highest form of worship, of love.

Sweetheart, you will never again hear Rayya say, “I’ll be over in ten minutes.”

But you HAD that, baby.

You had that beautiful thing.

And you loved it with all your heart. And here’s the thing: it wasn’t a little thing.

And here’s the other thing: there is so much more of it.

Keep going, angel. Keep living little. We love you.

Prompt

One of us here at LFL headquarters has a spiritual practice that includes rewatching The Office when we’re unwinding from the day. At the end of the series, the character Andy Bernard delivers what might be one of the greatest lines in tv history: “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good old days before you’ve actually left them.”

This week, friends, let’s ponder the moments that add up to the good old days. Please join me in asking this question: Dear Love, what would you have me know about appreciating the little things?

I am teaching two weekend-long creativity workshops in May (click below for more info and registration). As always, two things apply: 1) You DO NOT have to consider yourself a professional-level anything to join us, you just have to be willing to show up with an open heart, an open notebook, and the desire to follow your own curiosity. And 2) I love to see Lovelets in the room!

* Vancouver, May 24-25, Pinnacle Hotel Harbourfront

* Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, May 30-June 1