A Letter to My Daughter

My Dearest Khloe’,

           

            It seems like just last week I was holding you as you were snuggled so tight in your hospital blanket wearing your little pink beanie; so fragile. Tears rolled down my cheeks as you stared up at me and made eye contact with me for the first time. It was like a piece of my soul was given to you in that moment. We would forever be a part of one another even when we couldn’t be together, physically.

Long distance relationships can be the ultimate test of love and commitment. Sure, times are different now than they were before the luxuries of telecommunication, Skype and email, when people actually put pen to paper and mailed letters, a nearly forgotten art in our world today. Couples that try to keep the flame burning whilst living miles and miles away from each other. The test of long distance love between husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend can be very demanding, but a greater test than between the love of a father and daughter; there is none.

Throughout the past three years of your life we have been apart more than I care to admit. Through deployments, separations between your mother and I and other military obligations, our love has never faded and our bond has never been broken. It hurts and I may not always be there, but I hope that one day this letter will find you and help you to make perfect sense of all of this. I don’t know what the future holds for you, as everyone has their own paths in life that they must follow but what I do know is that in this letter are a few of the things that I’ve learned about life.

Appreciate the small things. In life it’s the small things that matter most, those little things that most people forget about or take for granted. When they happen, you’ll know and it’s important that you fully appreciate them because, one day, you may look back and wonder where the time went and those little moments will fade into memory. Its not the flashy cars or expensive clothes, it’s knowing that the clothes on your back are more than they seem and that there are people out there that don’t get to put on fresh clothes every morning when they wake up. Focus on the positive. The world is a cruel and dangerous place sometimes, but don’t always focus on the negative things in life because the world also has a beauty in it that takes a keen eye to see. When you experience the world’s beauty, take it in, soak in it and let it be a part of you. Take risks. As mean as the world can be, know that its ok to make yourself vulnerable and take risks from time to time because if you don’t, you will never grow as a person and you will never learn from your mistakes. Fall in love. Don’t be afraid to fall in love but remember to keep your guard up and only open your heart to the ones that deserve it most. Know that your heart will get broken, but you’ll be ok, I promise. I know it hurts and you’ll surely feel lost and confused, but time will pass and you will look back and realize that you weren’t as in love as you thought you were. Have faith. When you feel lost have faith and let God take you by the hand and guide you. He will never lead you astray. When you feel like you’re at rock bottom, turn to God. He will help. But also remember to be thankful and to thank God every day for the opportunities that He has given you. Focus on your happiness. Remember to concentrate on your own happiness and don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re not good enough or that you can’t do something because, ultimately, no one or no thing will ever be good enough for you! No one out there, other than me, is going to go out of their way to make things happen for you better than you yourself. Go for it! When you find something in life that you’re passionate about, pursue it and make it happen. Don’t stop when it gets too tough because nothing worth having in life comes easy. Hard work and dedication will always yield positive results and remember that if you find something you love doing, you’ll never work a day in your life. Be true to yourself. Never try to pretend to be someone else in order to make an impression. Always be yourself and let people fall in love with who you are because, in the end, people will always show their true colors. Let your true colors be the first thing they see.  Everything happens for a reason. Always remember that things happen, good and bad. People will come in and out of your life every day. It’s important to remember that everything happens for a reason and that you can’t always change fate. With that said, however, when you find something worth holding on to don’t let go of it even if it alters your own fate.

Stay positive and always remain a child at heart because in your heart is where you will always find true happiness. No matter what remember that when times get tough, it’s okay and that you’ll always be my Khloebear.

                                                Love,

                                               Daddy

Everlasting Love

Love: A word that is and has always been unexplainable by the human vocabulary, no matter what language you speak. For centuries, mankind has tried and failed to define the word time and time again to no avail. So many questions, so many doubts, and so many uncertainties have been raised when it comes to love. Adam and Eve, Romeo and Juliet: stories of people who come together under impossible circumstances for those that they love, not taking “no” as an answer when faced with tribulations that would so easily be taken for granted today.

What makes up the true meaning of the word? What truly defines what love is made of? What is it about us, as humans, that feel the longing desire to love and to be loved by someone else? What is it about our beings and our souls that connect to others, to make ourselves so vulnerable to someone and become infatuated with everything about them? What has happened to the meanings of love and passion as time has passed: all questions that may never be answered and rightfully so since the true meaning of love is, itself, a mystery. What happened to the times when a guy would ride for days on horseback to court the woman he loved or the times when true love was as common as today’s divorce rates? Times have changed and centuries have passed yet we are no closer to defining the true definition of the word. When God created man did he put something in our souls that would prepare us to overcome the violence that he knew would some day come? Love? The ability to sympathize, to care, a “soft spot” in our soul that would overcome all evil. Whatever His intentions, I’m sure he knew that that feeling would become a part of us that we would never be able to explain, no matter how technologically advanced we became as a species.

We go our entire lives searching, hoping that perhaps some day someone will sweep us off our feet and catch us when we fall into love. Meeting someone so unexpectedly that when we go to sleep that night we feel as if we are a completely different person that when we woke that very same morning. It is in our nature to “go with the grain” and follow the social norms set by society, yet we sometimes forget just how important it is to love someone and to be loved back. At what point in history did we decide that it was ok to settle? Perhaps when King Henry VIII set the standards for divorce? We may never know. We can only rekindle our connection with true of meaning of love, whatever that meaning may be.

Love is such a powerful feeling when it first forms as a result of a strong connection with someone. But why does it fade? Why is it so hard to put the words “love” and “everlasting” in the same sentence? Why do we become so infatuated with what makes a person tick only to grow apart from them as time passes. Is love really everlasting? I truly believe that it can be if the circumstances are right and we are willing to take leap of faith on someone.

I can’t define the meaning of love from someone else’s perspective; however, I can try to explain it from my own. What I do know about love is that it is, in fact, a very fragile and sensitive emotion that is not formed from any physical part of our bodies or from pleasures of the flesh. It opens us up to vulnerabilities and heartbreak, it turns us against everything that we instinctively do to stay strong in this violent, cruel and love absent world that we live in. It’s a very scary place, our world today. We love those closest to us as family in a completely different way since those that we grow up with are often times always going to be there no matter what. This doesn’t hold true to someone we meet at a park, at a grocery store, or at a wedding under completely unexpected circumstances. People we meet randomly come and go and change like the seasons. It would be natural in the world that we live in to keep our guard up and to be cautious with our hearts, with our love. Especially since people in today’s society take such a precious thing for granted. When you fall head over heels in love with someone and open yourself to the possibility of being hurt, why let it fade? Is it in our promiscuous nature that we allow ourselves to fall out of love just as easily as we fall into it? In the times of technology, dating websites, Internet porn, prostitution, violence and hate, I can see why love has become such a rarity among people.

Sure, there may be times when we think we have fallen in love when, in reality, we have only tip toed through it. We may wake up one day and realize that we aren’t as in love as we thought we were. It happens, but its all too common. We may love and lose, but time will go on and we will be ok. We learn from the pain and we look at our scars to remind of where we come from and where we’ve been. Its up to us not to make the same mistake twice. When your heart is covered in scars its not as tender and sensitive as it once was. It becomes tough like scar tissue, hard to break and hard to penetrate. The mistakes we make, unfortunately, stay with us forever, hanging over our heads like a rain cloud, reminding us of why we shouldn’t fall in love so easily or being afraid that the person that we were meant to love is only a figment of our imaginations that we only hear about through generations of hopeful stories.

We may never be able to define the true meaning of everlasting love, but its out there, somewhere. It may be like looking up at the night sky and trying to find a star that we cant even see with our naked eye, but its up to us to find it and up to fate to let it find us. We shouldn’t let the things that we cant control overcome us. We can only hope that we are found by that special person that isn’t afraid to take a risk, that isn’t afraid to make themselves vulnerable to someone that they love. But if it happens, if we are found, we should never take advantage and we should never let it fade. Its up to us to keep the flame burning even when the winds of our society try to extinguish it.