Pick any beach early in the morning, when the sweet beige sand is as unblemished as a prom queen’s face, and you’ll discover the hunter of lost paraphernalia. With a not-so-magic wand to glimpse below the sandy surface, anything found becomes a treasure. But do the trinkets and coins revealed have value because they were lost or because they were found?

Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. We can mourn the loss of what never was or what we perceive we have lost: time, money, or the too-often cast-to-the-winds sense of self. But perhaps what we never had, or thought we lost, happened for a reason – because something far better was waiting in the wings and we wouldn’t have found it without our life lessons, as tough as they may have been.

Part of our culture’s “dumbing down” of relationships is the lowering of expectations based on the premise that boys will be boys, and for that matter, girls will be girls. When looking at ourselves, it is easy to fall into stereotypical rationalizations, and try to justify our discomforts by accepting behaviors we don’t really like. Over and over and over again. We can only change ourselves, in action or perception, and continually strive to “get it” – and no longer be willing to dismiss anything less than what we really desire and deserve.

But what happens when the bar is set higher than Marilyn Monroe offering you a magnum of Dom Perignon at the beginning of a three day weekend? There is no way to limbo under this level of grand design, and why would we ever want to?

In the uncharted distance, in a misty and often forgotten part of our minds, a human of un-paralleled perfection lingers. Always knowing they are there, we wait for the roulette wheel to spin and point to all that must be: the good, the bad, and the ugly – hoping it will stop in that perfect place. Sometimes our wise mind whispers in our ears, even when making all the wrong choices. Do we still have to make all the wrong choices to be able to know the right ones? It would appear so.

True love is never for sale. Time is too high a price, and cheap words from empty souls are visions that can’t hold their form in the light of a wise and authentic man or woman. Smoky fires can’t burn out-of-control in our hearts for long when the peace of a higher presence gently and repeatedly settles down the flames. Wouldn’t it be nice to rest by a fire, warm as never before, and take comfort in the thought that the right one will come along when we have done our work? Sometimes leaving the past is better than the staying ever was and the priceless knowledge of what we are really worth can finally emerge.

If you have a question, a thought or perhaps a musing of your own I’d love to hear it.