{"id":1938,"date":"2011-02-08T11:08:05","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T15:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/solbeam.com\/?p=1938"},"modified":"2016-10-18T22:54:22","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T02:54:22","slug":"the-world-can-handle-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seekingsol.com\/the-world-can-handle-it\/","title":{"rendered":"the world can handle it"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I will come back to this blog; I&#8217;ve just been planning a wedding for the last 6 months (and abroad for 2.5 of those) &#8211; so please just forgive me.<\/p>\n<p>In the meantime, I do invite you to watch our &#8220;save-the-date&#8221; video &#8211; because it&#8217;s fun and love stories should be shared. We&#8217;re also doing pre-marriage counseling (which I LOVE) and it was on our task list to write a letter to our wedding guide\/officiant\/counselor\/mentor explaining &#8220;why we love our partner&#8221;, and I sent her the following letter this morning. It&#8217;s rough, unedited and intimate. But the world can handle it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/14171730\" width=\"700\" height=\"394\" frameborder=\"0\" title=\"Save The Date\" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><em>Why I love Slade.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The first thing that actually comes to mind, are the three words we chose to root our wedding: travel\/explore, witness, play. And I think it&#8217;s because we both embody and practice these verbs together in our partnered approach to life.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Our relationship was born on a plane. We&#8217;re met in LAX and spent the first 24 hours of our life together, in route from LA to India. He was wearing flip flops and jeans &#8211; two things that I told our student group, explicitly, not to pack. And yet he provided me with a rationale in such confident good humor that I felt no need to challenge. Instead I laughed. And thus began the softening of Christina (slightly hardened, as 8 years of independent travel and living will do). We spent two weeks preparing our program together &#8211; WORKING &#8211; researching, contacting, setting up, communicating, organizing. From 7am till 11pm. Finally, it was time to pick up our students and we boarded a train that was\u00a0supposed\u00a0to take us to Calcutta in 12 hours. Mid-course, the train stopped. It had stopped for about 8 hours, but Slade and I hadn&#8217;t: we just talked, and laughed, and talked and laughed. \u00a0I remember there was a moment of silence, when we both laid down in our separate train bunks for a few quiet moments. Looking back, we both remembering thinking at the same time, &#8220;I could care less if this train was broken for another 12 hours. Will I ever grow tired of this person? I think I&#8217;m in trouble.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Exactly three years later, I feel like I&#8217;m still on that train with Slade; crunched up in our bunks, caring not for time or &#8220;breakdowns&#8221; &#8211; but \u00a0hanging out the open door of the train, sipping chai and encouraging him to try some slightly dangerous and very spicy mung beans (or other challenges he can&#8217;t resist). Back in the bunk, Slade is prompting humorous and engaging conversations with all those that pass by, as I (still fail at) trying to read even a chapter of my book (ever) in his presence, instead being unable to resist his charms and falling over myself for just a little more banter, laughter and flirting with the elements of life together. Even now, nestled in our home together, we travel. We open up our laptops &#8211; and though others can&#8217;t see it (or necessarily speak our language) &#8211; we venture into technologies and designs and windows to worlds of imagination and invention that don&#8217;t always exists for others. Or we\u00a0collaborate\u00a0on a project. Be it building a green house, website, flower bed or wedding invitation &#8211; there is an element of exploration in everything we do together. A trust in following our curiosity. A faith in knowing the steps to getting there will inevitably influence the vision. And a deep love for a blank slate.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Which gets me to play.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>I think it&#8217;s my natural tendency to take things a little too seriously. And at the same time get caught up in my strong imagination. Don&#8217;t worry &#8211; I know that these characteristics are also a source of my creativity. But what I didn&#8217;t know, until I met Slade, was how much healthier and lighter I felt when I had someone who could keep these elements in check &#8211; and do so delicately. I call on Slade for a &#8220;reality check&#8221; on almost every interpersonal altercation I encounter &#8211; as he has a DEEP and intuitive rational that&#8217;s calm, kind and super strategic. He says this of his mom, so he probably inherited it &#8211; but Slade is the BEST problem solver I&#8217;ve ever known. I respect him deeply for this emotional and intellectual intelligence, and actually can&#8217;t imagine having a more competent or resourceful person by my side. And as &#8220;efficient&#8221; as that sounds, I think this resourcefulness comes from his most natural drive \u00a0&#8211; which is to PLAY with the elements around him. Be it a game, paintbrushes, website, camera, puppy or small child &#8211; he&#8217;ll pick it up and follow with focused curiosity. And there&#8217;s very little I love more than watching him in this state; his &#8220;artist&#8221; state. \u00a0I have profound trust in his vision when he&#8217;s in the this state; It&#8217;s something I love to foster and I find myself conspiring ways of setting him up with the elements and the time, for him to &#8220;fall&#8221; into it. Especially as this spirit of constant play is infectious &#8211; and infuses my own life with a lightness &#8211; that it does need. Play and exploration were enormous themes in my independent childhood &#8211; where I spent 10 hours a day outside doing both, within the natural elements. I&#8217;m not sure what got lost or hardened along the way (maybe it does with most adults) &#8211; but what a delight to find it again, and to laugh and dance and play &#8211; feeling like that IS God&#8217;s (as loosely defined as possible) wish and our responsibility.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And I guess that gets me to Witness. I&#8217;ve seen a lot of this world. And surprisingly, I do think it&#8217;s much more beauty than ruin. Still, we&#8217;ve both seen hard things &#8211; and more than enough to put our privileges and position in perspective. I live with that every day. And I also live with the task of fitting the responsibility of what I have witnessed into my life action plan. Before I met Slade, it was really hard for me to center myself in this spinning world view. I always joke that I never felt jet lag until I met Slade; I just landed and my equilibrium re-centered immediately, and I took off running. A nice talent &#8211; but also a slightly dangerous and very unrooted one. After I met Slade, I, for the first time, felt my equilibrium struggling to stop spinning in tune with his &#8211; I literally felt like my heart had to re-calibrate. I can still acclimatize and acculturate &#8211; don&#8217;t worry. But there is something very healthy about knowing that I actually am tethered, no far how I reach, to a pole that can bring me back to center.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>And the other half of Witness is the simple act of holding everything in life SACRED. I feel\/know Slade to do this. As I do. And the combination allows us to hold life, beauty, and relationships with profound appreciation for their blessings. Slade&#8217;s parents are sacred to him. MY parents and siblings are sacred to him. Nature is profoundly sacred to him. This wedding is SACRED to Slade. It&#8217;s not an event or a commitment or just another traditional life stage &#8211; it might be the biggest thing in his life. Aside from the birth of a child. And he knows this. Respects and holds it as so. As I do. And probably the only thing more important in life than approaching it with humble gratitude and respect, is having a partner who can mirror, complement and share in the upholding of the same values and approach.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>There are hundreds of other &#8220;reasons why&#8221; and individual characteristics of Slade that I love (already sent you 64 of them!) &#8211; but it&#8217;s really our shared approach to life and the harmony and health that I have found born between us that I love most. Like a good recipe or alchemy, complimentary ingredients just came together and made something beautiful. Something that I could have never conceived of on my own. And so to sum it up with a very appropriate metaphor: if he and I were going on a trip (along a shared life path, perhaps?), and we could only put four things in our backpack to take with us, they would be: a creative approach, playfulness with the elements, the container of our India train bunk, and a humble and sacred appreciation for all that we encounter and witness.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I will come back to this blog; I&#8217;ve just been planning a wedding for the last 6 months (and abroad for 2.5 of those) &#8211; so please just forgive me. In the meantime, I do&#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"more\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/seekingsol.com\/the-world-can-handle-it\/\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,105,26],"tags":[195,197,225,227],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>the world can handle it - Christina Rivera<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/seekingsol.com\/the-world-can-handle-it\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"the world can handle it - Christina Rivera\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I will come back to this blog; I&#8217;ve just been planning a wedding for the last 6 months (and abroad for 2.5 of those) &#8211; so please just forgive me. 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