What does your mama's cooking smell like?

Yesterday some friends of ours brought their six month old and two year old over for a swim in our pool. Being beautiful doesn’t hurt their cause but aside from that, the kids have the personalities to melt your heart as well.

Afterwards, me and the other dad, were leaning back in the patio chairs talking about the American college and professional football season fast approaching. Seems their college alma mater is ranked highly and so is the price of the game tickets.

At one point the subject of lying on the coach watching a football game with the windows open, the cool air finally replacing the stifling Texas summer heat with a baby laying on your stomach, napping, came up. We both agreed that such an occurrence was one of the moments in life to cherish. As we both thought about it, we leaned back and in our minds we were both there, smelling the tops of their tiny infant heads, feeling the warmth of them as they lay on you, dozing off while the game was on T.V.; bliss.

It occurred to me that whether we live in the Northern Hemisphere or Southern Hemisphere, whether we are old or young, with children or not, there are moments that define our lives, our version of bliss and are the things that connect all of us.

It is not the DSL speed, VoIP, text messaging, Web 2.0 Social Networking sites, lap top access of internet technology in our lives that connect us all together. But rather, it is the common bond that is elicited by the emotional sharing and the feelings that create our personal bliss no matter our background or the place we call home.

For some of you, spring may be about to begin. Football may mean the World Cup and the prairie of North Texas is a indistinct, unknown and maybe even laughably ugly image.

But no matter where you live, there are things our senses take in which create a bond, an emotional connection and therefore a shared humanness that gives real value to lives, just like the other dad and I had for a few moments on my patio. We happened to be sitting by each other, but it can happen at the same instant anywhere on the planet. Distance seperating us is a human concept that applies to our physicality.

For instance, it is my guess that no matter where you live when you are reading this, you will understand what I’m saying on an emotional level when I suggest some things from my home that might be in common with yours.

Maybe it is the smell of fresh cut grass, newly split firewood, fresh laundry on a clothes line, a pine forest, salt spray or the inside of a horse barn.

Possibly it is remembering what it feels like to hold someone you care about deeply on the dance floor for the first time in your life. Possibly it is remembering the first time you were on a dance floor with someone, period. Or, watching a smile directed at you begin slowly and then take over a face with affection that is sincere, full of warmth and irreplaceable.

Maybe it is standing still to watch, admire and be moved by a hummingbird feeding, a butterfly at rest on a flower bloom, the shadow of a cloud pass over a field, the wind moving across a wheat field, the sound of a bird’s song in early morning stillness.

At my home, I remember the smell of a home cooked fried chicken Sunday lunch and the feel of family around a table. Everyone can smell the aroma of their mother’s cooking on the stove. Most all of us know the smell of freshly cut summer vegetables from the garden, ripe apples and fruit at Christmastime, new crayons in a box, new notebooks and school clothes on the first day of school, fresh bread baking or bacon frying from the kitchen while you still lay in bed.

Whatever the source, uniqueness or distinct nature of each of individual definition of bliss, it is the commonality of it, the community, the humanness on the most primal, spiritual and deepest level that really connects each of us.

And, it is that feeling of bliss we often search for elsewhere which actually resides within us that can cause us much self inflicted frustration and alienation. But, when we see within us the lives we want, when we feel, smell and taste the bliss of what we can imagine in goodness, with integrity and dignity of purpose for ourselves and our families, we have what we all want: interconnectedness with the light that is our source.

So, the next time you can think of what ever it is that is uniquely yours and causes you to lean back and visualize with a fondness of a steak lover seeing a perfect rib eye; that can create a moment of appreciation which is all yours in the vast expanse of time, and is even blissful in nature, hold on to it and remember it.

And when you want something, something that will benefit you and others, want it from the place within you which originates those feelings of bliss. Goodness begats Goodness. Want from the same continuity and community that links us all. Then, we all are with you, even the source of all of our light.

By the way, the very inexpensive 21 Day Positive Mental Habit Guidebook is coming soon. Watch for it!