Big Love

—A self love ritual—

The date is confirmed and now you need to prepare to welcome a special guest – a visiting dignitary. As the host, you must make your visitor feel completely at home, considered, at ease, and you also aim to provide a pleasurable and memorable evening.

The preparation is vast and will take the day to do all that needs doing. Cleaning, tidying, and editing the visual clutter is the first step. Then comes clearing and energizing the space, with fresh air and incense. You must look at your space with fresh eyes. What would a visitor notice that you do not? With the canvas prepared, next comes enticing the senses.

Sight. Touch. Taste. Smell. Sound.

How will the dignitary experience the enticement and pleasure that these senses can allow? All must be considered and prepared meticulously in advance.

For Taste, all the best and most delicious items are procured. Chocolate, fruit, cheese, honey, nuts meet champagne and red wine.

For Touch, the warmth of a fire, fluffy pillows, the softness of a cashmere throw, and rose oil for the skin.

For Sight, beauty and more beauty. Roses of course, but also lilies, and fronds of ferns. Art and books that illicit the softer, slower side. With lighting top of mind, dimmed, and candlelit when possible.

For Smell, perfume, essential oil diffusers, beeswax candles, fireplace burning of wood, flowers, and clean skin.

For Sound, enchanting and relaxing music, the crackling of the fireplace, the sounds of nature, and of champagne fizzing. A cat purring, a dog snoring. Rain as it falls outside.

The catch?

Unfortunately, you receive word after your final act of preparation that the dignitary must cancel at the last minute, sending regrets and a bottle of their best wine.

Instead of feeling devastated, you decide to step into the shoes of the dignitary. Why let all that you prepared go to waste? The chocolate will not eat itself and the bubbles will not last forever.

So you become the dignitary. You don your finest robes and jewels. You allow your senses to be enticed and the warmth of enjoyment and relaxation to wash over you as you enjoy the space, the provisions, and the promise of an amazing night.

The visiting dignitary is a self-love ritual that shows you how to welcome yourself with care, thoughtfulness, and love.

This night can also serve another purpose, to set the stage for love, as you already have found pleasure and enjoyment independent of another.

This was a ritual that a friend of mine was taught as part of a relationship workshop. They tried it out and found it to be helpful enough that they shared it with me.

Once I read a book, called something along the lines of The Company Cheese, and there was a similar message to be found in home design and lifestyle. Don’t keep fancy cheese only for guests. Life is for enjoyment, and eating the camembert and brie and drunken goat are worth experiencing, not for saving for others. The same goes for the best quality bed linens, or any number of things. Yes, share the bounty with guests. But remember that you, too, are worthy.