Well dear readers, according to my very sophisticated blogging editorial calendar, aka a post it in my office, I was *scheduled* to write about the brilliant Gary Chapman’s 5 Love Languages today.
It’s a super fantabulous book that teaches you about different ways of expressing love and how to recognize the way your partner expresses affection. I could easily write 1,000 words on its virtues and how it can help you in your marriage. And I will. Someday. Just not today.
Today, I will lovingly send you to the 5 Love Languages Quiz here.
It takes less than 10 minutes. It is both fun and useful. You can thank me later.
And now that I have done my official duty in providing you with a scientifically proven tool to help your marriage, I will write about my latest obsession – Downton Abbey and what I have learned over the last 3 weeks of marathon-television-viewing-adventures.
If you have never watched the show, no worries, these themes are universal and although I will mention characters’ names, you can probably insert your friend’s names and every point will make sense, because the best kind of fiction is the most like life.
If you do watch the show, I would *love* to know your favorite lessons from it in the comments.
In the meantime, here are mine:
Family matters – not just for titles, property, delicious food and a roof over your head. Family matters when you are having a bad day (or in Edith’s case, a bad life) and need a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on or a new mission in life (when your old missions don’t make much sense anymore). Family as it turns out, isn’t just connected by blood and marriage – it can be formed over endless hours of cleaning and serving and working and your work family can love you just as much as the one you were born into.
Death is part of life – any Downton viewer can agree that *too many beloved characters have died on this show!* However, what a great reminder that death is just as natural to life as sunlight is to the day and moonlight to the night. Taking a moment to remember that everything ends is one of my favorite ways to savor what is in front of me right now. (Which for the last few weeks, was another episode of Downton in any minute I could spare.)
Marriages are like fingerprints – each one is different and each one is beautiful. Cora and Robert, Anna and Bates, Matthew and Mary, Sybil and Branson – all such different couples, with layers of love and life and pain and humor and faith. Every marriage on that show has gone through beautiful loving times and tough moments that required grit, commitment and compassion to survive. Every one of them has made mistakes and every one of them has been so committed to love as to find a way to overcome them. Although occasionally they annoy me, those are my kind of people.
Falling in love is easy. Staying in love takes practice. I fell in love with Downton Abbey during the very first episode. I know I will love those characters and suffer with them and laugh with them and cry with them for as long as the show is on the air. I see so many metaphors in every relationship – lessons, sparks, ideas, inspirations. In this case, Robert and Cora, the parents who have been married the longest got married for money, then fell in love, then had all kinds of hugely stressful family events – sometimes tearing them apart, sometimes uniting them more than ever. And the only way to stay in love is to practice. A little every day. Whether on TV or in real life.
Passion comes in all shapes and sizes. Whether it’s the cook’s passion for a well made dish, the butler’s passion for a properly run household, the dowager’s passion for wit and sarcasm, there are all kinds of passions celebrated and shared on this show. Occasionally, I tend to focus on *just one thing* (today for example, on this show) and sometimes I forget that life is full of all kinds of experiences that can bring delight and enjoyment to me and to the ones I love. Seeing everyone’s different passions reminds me that we can love our work, or our hobbies or our dogs or the homes we create or the pies we bake and everything we love can bless our lives if we let it.
This weeks’ LoveWork – take the 5 love languages quiz. For extra credit, watch an episode of Downton Abbey. Do you know your love language? Please share in the comments.
To see all the Pins on my Downton Abbey Board, click here.
