Adidas Wilson's Blog, page 142
June 1, 2017
Tested in a barbershop, 7th-grader becomes Baltimore’s first-ever national chess champion
In the back of the Reflection Eternal Barbershop in Baltimore’s Barclay neighborhood, owner Sundiata Osagie sits locked in an intense chess battle — with a 12-year-old boy.
A skilled chess player, Osagie easily beats most of the customers who challenge him at his shop. But this is no ordinary challenger. This 12-year-old boy is Cahree Myrick, who has just been crowned the first individual national youth chess champion in the history of Baltimore.
“This is the chess champion of the country right here,” Osagie brags to customers, as the two players trade pawns.
Though Cahree has learned to play in a formal chess league, his mother, Yuana Spears, brings her oldest son here to the barbershop — amid the buzz cuts, jazz music and history books — to test his skills.
Cahree went a remarkable 7-0 in Nashville two weeks ago to win his division at the United States Chess Federation SuperNationals, and Osagie and others have been bragging about his achievements ever since.
The Baltimore Kids Chess League, in which he plays, touted his victory as perfection. Mayor Catherine Pugh honored Cahree and his teammates at City Hall Wednesday. And the Baltimore Orioles invited him to Camden Yards Friday.
“The City of Baltimore wants you to know we are really proud of your accomplishments,” Pugh told Cahree before hanging a medal around his neck.
To be sure, Cahree’s victory did not come in the event’s highest division, but the commissioner of the Baltimore Kids Chess League says it’s a standout achievement nonetheless.
“This is a big deal,” commissioner Steve Alpern said. “To win it with a perfect score is pretty incredible.
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“People don’t think Baltimore City is producing these kind of achievements, but we are.”
The Baltimore Kids Chess League is open only to the city’s public school students. Launched in 2003, the program has produced three national championship teams. But Cahree is the first player to win an individual title.
To do so, he had to outscore 249 players from 28 states in his division. Eighty-nine players from Maryland competed in more than 20 divisions. Cahree was the only player to finish in the top five in his division.
“I don’t brag about it as much as my relatives will,” Cahree says. “I only talk about it if someone asks about it.”
Alpern said the city’s chess league is gaining attention thanks in part to victories such as Cahree’s. He said he often gets calls from parents of students at private schools or county schools asking to join. He tells them they have to enroll in the city’s school system.
“I tell them, ‘Sorry, you can transfer to the public schools’ — and some of them do,” he says.
Lesa Horne coaches the chess team at Roland Park Elementary and Middle School, where Cahree plays. For the students on her squad, she said, she sees immediate benefits.
“They have to learn a lot of focus,” she said. “It teaches them to plan ahead and learn from their mistakes.”
“I’d rather them learn from mistakes on the chess board than on the streets.”
Going into the tournament, Cahree said, he didn’t believe he would leave with the championship. Having finished 24th last year, he knew how tough the competition was.
But then he started to win. And win. And win.
“Everyone has a chance to win against whoever they play,” Cahree says. “I knew if I stick to my plan and tried my best that I would be fine.”
His mother, spears, traveled to Tennessee with the team over Mother’s Day weekend. She waited nervously outside the competition room for the results after each round. When Cahree emerged, she couldn’t tell from his face whether or not he had won.
“They call him the poker face player,” she said. “You don’t know whether he’s winning or losing when he’s playing. Cahree’s facial expression never changes.”
Cahree’s final game was against an opponent from Texas. Cahree was dressed casually in Nike shorts and an Under Armour shirt. Opponents from other states often dressed formally with dress shirts and bow ties.
Cahree drew the black pieces, and played one of his favorite openings: The Scandinavian defense, a counter move that often results in his queen taking center control of the board.
Source:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-chess-champion-20170531-story.html
Deathstroke: Manu Bennett tells fans to lobby for a spinoff
The Arrow-verse has managed to establish a number of fan-favorite characters since Arrowˆs 2012 debut, but few can compete with Slade Wilson. Manu Bennett’s Deathstroke is nothing less than a powerhouse in his action scenes, and his gray (at best) sense of morality has allowed him to effortlessly oscillate between hero, anti-hero, and villain. Bennett and his fanbase recently started a quasi-campaign to get Slade a spin-off of his own, and now they’ve enlisted the help of a very notable DC insider: Deathstroke creator Marc Wolfman. Here are Wolfman’s thoughts on the possibility of a standalone project for the character.
Much appreciated, Manu. I love Deathstroke and I was overjoyed to see your return and would love to see you do more.
— Marv Wolfman (@marvwolfman) June 1, 2017
Getting the blessing of a character’s creator does not necessarily guarantee that a spin-off will materialize, but its case is obviously helped. Manu Bennett’s Slade Wilson has easily become one of the best Arrow-verse characters over the course of the last five years, and the actor’s portrayal of the badass mercenary has even managed to make an impression on Marv Wolfman. With the enthusiasm of the comic book writer vocalizing his backing the petition for a Deathstroke solo project, it will be hard for the folks at DC to ignore that the possibility has potential.
A move such as this logistically already makes plenty of sense. Following the Season 5 finale of Arrow, Slade’s role in the Arrow-verse has once again become incredibly important. “Lian Yu” teased new storylines for the character (involving his quest to find his son Joe), so now seems like the best possible time to dive headfirst into the Deathstroke corner of the DC universe. If Manu Bennett and Marv Wolfman are into the idea — and it’s hard to believe that no one at The CW or WB would also on board — then there’s no obvious non-financial reason not to take it seriously.
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A Deathstroke solo project has become even more possible for DC because of the infrastructure that the company is beginning to establish. After all, a DC-specific streaming service is currently in development, and it will function as the platform for a live-action Teen Titans show, as well as Season 3 of Young Justice. Warner Bros. is going to need content, and a Deathstroke-centric project (whether it be a full series or a miniseries) is a perfect candidate. Slade is already a known enemy of the Titans, so bringing in Manu Bennett’s version of the character to face off against the team could even represent a perfect catalyst for a live-action adaptation of The Judas Contract at some point.
As of right now, the prospect of a Deathstroke solo series is little more than an incredibly appealing piece of fan-fiction, but we will keep you posted if any new developments occur. All of your favorite Arrow-verse series will return this fall (along with newcomer series Black Lightning), but for now, make sure to check out our summer premiere guide for more in-depth information on all of this summer’s most highly anticipated small screen premieres.
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MEET THE TREND-CHASING DEVELOPERS FILLING THE APP STORE WITH FIDGET SPINNERS
It’s summer 2017 and the App Store is spilling over with fidget spinner apps. Their titles are largely uninspired, impossible to tell apart: Fidget Spinner, Fidget Spinner Toy, Fidget Hand Spinner, Fidget Spin. Most are lazy re-creations of the popular stress reliever. All are indicative of a larger trend in mobile gaming to identify and mass-produce the hot idea of the moment.
The fidget spinner — a cheap, easy-to-make object that you can pick up at your local bodega or gas station — exploded into popularity in late April. The toy, which comes in a variety of colors and shapes, has inspired techno music, phone cases, rocket-powered safety nightmares, and even the dry world of workplace art.
Fidget apps began to overflow in the App Store around mid-May. The rush to crank out clones and copies is a predictable aspect of the mobile ecosystem. Flappy Bird, Threes!, Pokémon Go: all of these games were followed by a surge of rushed rip-offs hoping to ride the wave of popularity and skim some cash in the process.
But fidget spinners are a strange take on this trend: a play off the popularity of a physical toy that serves very little purpose, translated into a digital app that does even less. The entire point of a fidget spinner is the tactile feel that no app can capture.
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Earlier this month, Ketchapp’s Fidget Spinner was the top free app in the App Store; it’s since fallen to number six. The app isn’t a high-quality game or a good stress-releasing spinner toy. As my colleague Paul Miller explained, “The whole app is basically designed to minimize your time fidget spinning while maximizing ad impressions.”
Developer Ketchapp has a history of controversial apps. The company has been accused of cloning games like Sirvo’s Threes! and ustwo Games’ Monument Valley with 2048 and Skyward. Ketchapp disputes these claims. Last February, co-founder and co-director Antoine Morcos told Tech Insider that Skyward was a different type of game that didn’t fall into the same genre Monument Valley. His response to 2048’s similarities to Threes! Was that “all [car] racing games look the same.”
Today, Ketchapp exists under the umbrella of publisher Ubisoft. The company behind AAA franchises like Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, and Watch Dogs acquired Ketchapp last year.
Fidget Spinner looks and functions like many other fidget spinner games in the App Store, but it’s hard to tell who’s mimicking who. It seems all parties are equally looking to cash in on a hot, albeit undoubtedly short-lived, trend. In an email to The Verge, Morcos says the idea was inspired by the popularity of real-life spinners. “Seeing [people] playing the Fidget Spinner everywhere has given us the idea to create a game based on this trend, that would be as addictive as the real toy,” he says. “We came up with something interesting and unique, the idea of spinning the fidget to earn coins, which in return would let you unlock new crazy models. Also, there is a concept of ‘the more you are good in spinning, the better you will improve the stats of your spinner over time.’”
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/1/15720264/app-store-with-fidget-spinners-developer-ios
This French school is using facial recognition to find out when students aren’t paying attention
A business school in Paris will soon begin using artificial intelligence and facial analysis to determine whether students are paying attention in class. The software, called Nestor, will be used two online classes at the ESG business school beginning in September. LCA Learning, the company that created Nestor, presented the technology at an event at the United Nations in New York last week.
The idea, according to LCA founder Marcel Saucet, is to use the data that Nestor collects to improve the performance of both students and professors. The software uses students’ webcams to analyze eye movements and facial expressions and determine whether students are paying attention to a video lecture. It then formulates quizzes based on the content covered during moments of inattentiveness. Professors would also be able to identify moments when students’ attention waned, which could help to improve their teaching, Saucet says.
At first, the technology will only be used for students who watch lectures remotely, though Saucet hopes to eventually launch an in-class version that would send real-time notifications to students whenever they’re not paying attention. Speaking to journalists during a demonstration at ESG’s Paris campus last month, Saucet said the technology could vastly improve the performance of students who take massive open online courses, or MOOCs.
“The problem with MOOCs is that they don’t work,” Saucet said. “It’s been 10 years that we’ve been trying e-learning, and in the US it’s been 25 years. And it doesn’t work.”
A press release from the UN’s World Council of Peoples, which hosted last week’s event, described the launch of Nestor as the “first AI led class,” though that’s not entirely accurate. The software is not capable of actually teaching a course, and it’s not the first time that schools have experimented with similar technologies. The IE Business School in Madrid recently created a WOW Room (the acronym stands for “Window on the World”), where professors stand before a wall of screens and lecture students who tune in from afar. Like Nestor, the system uses “emotion recognition systems” to measure students’ attention.
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Advocates for AI in education say the technology could be used as a digital tutor that would adapt to a student’s individual needs, and help foster more effective studying habits. Such software could also help teachers by providing quantitative feedback on the effectiveness of their teaching, advocates say. Some researchers have even raised the prospect of AI acting as a “lifelong learning companion” that would accompany students for years.
But AI programs rely on massive troves of personal data, and there are concerns over how such data would be treated. A personalized learning program launched in New York by InBloom, a data analytics company, collapsed in 2014 amid growing concerns over how data on students would be used and protected from hackers.
Saucet says Nestor won’t store any of the video footage it captures and that his company has no plans to sell any other data the software collects. (His company sells its software to schools.) The data would also be encrypted and anonymized, he says. In addition to facial recognition and analysis, the software can integrate with students’ calendars to suggest possible study times, and track their online behavior to pick up on patterns. If a student typically spends their weeknights watching YouTube videos, for example, Nestor could suggest that they instead spend that time studying. Saucet acknowledges, however, that it will ultimately be up to each school to decide how to treat and store such data.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/26/15679806/ai-education-facial-recognition-nestor-france
Cadillac experiments with tech that can talk to traffic lights
Cadillac is currently developing a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) system, so its vehicles will be able to receive messages from local infrastructure. Right now, it’s limited to two traffic lights outside GM’s Warren Technical Center in Michigan. The work is being done in collaboration with the Michigan Department of Transportation and the Macomb County Department of Roads.
In short, the traffic lights can tell when a vehicle might have an issue with a stoplight based on its current speed. If you’ve ever had a yellow light pop up that forced you to either slam on the brakes or jam on the gas, that’s what this is trying to prevent. A warning will let the driver know ahead of time to either begin slowing down or speed up a bit, which could very well prevent an accident before it happens.
Of course, sending and receiving data like this could be a privacy concern, but Cadillac assures it won’t be a problem. The data being sent doesn’t identify the vehicle in any way, whether it’s the car’s VIN or its registration number. Cadillac also claims the wireless signals cannot be interfered with, thanks to the encryption it uses.
Cadillac already has its V2V system installed in the 2017 CTS sedan. Using GPS and dedicated short-range communications, vehicles can send and receive messages from other cars up to 1,000 feet away. It can let you know when highway traffic comes to a stop, or if a nearby car ends up in a collision.
Other automakers are also dabbling in V2I technology. Audi has its Traffic Light Information system, which can tell drivers when a light is about to turn green, so that a driver can be paying full attention when that happens. It’s only in use in Nevada for now, but it’s likely to roll out to other markets as transportation authorities embrace this kind of fledgling tech.
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Microsoft’s new Skype redesign is a radical change that looks like Snapchat
Microsoft acquired Skype nearly six years ago, and ever since then it feels like the messaging service has been experiencing an existential crisis. Skype has been slowly transitioning from a peer-to-peer service to the cloud, and it’s been a bumpy ride with many design changesand issues. While Microsoft has managed to add features like free group video calling and Skype for Web, the software giant has struggled with the design and feature set of Skype as it attempts to compete with challengers like FaceTime, Messenger, WhatsApp, and more.
Microsoft is once again redesigning Skype today.
Described as “the next generation of Skype,” the new design focuses on messaging. Skype is well known and used widely for video and audio calls, but iMessage, WhatsApp, Messenger, Snapchat and other messaging services have taken the lead for today’s conversations. The new Skype messaging interface now includes three sections in a conversation: find, chat, and capture. Find lets you search through a conversation, or find images, restaurants, and even add-ins like YouTube or Giphy to add content into a message. Chat is the basic conversation view you’d expect with options for emoji or picture additions, but the newest section is capture.
Capture feels a lot like Snapchat within Skype, and it immediately launches into the camera to let you take pictures or hold down for video. As you hold down for video you’ll immediately recognize one of the more subtle design changes in this new version of Skype, a squiggly line that represents the amount of time for a recording. This line is also used for calling, or when contacts are typing. Once you’ve captured a video or picture you can then add stickers, text, or simply annotate it, all just like Snapchat.
Skype is also introducing a new Highlights feature that’s a lot like Snapchat stories. Highlights lets you post a stream of photos and videos that friends can view and react with emoticons. Even in text- or video-based conversations you’ll be able to react on Skype with emoticons. It seems the new Skype UI is really designed to make you use more and more of the new chat features available.
Even calling is getting redesigned for this new version of Skype. You can drag and drop people around in conversations, and react with emoticons during calls. During my limited testing it felt a lot smoother than regular group video chats, but I didn’t feel the need to blast emoticons at people.
Today’s Skype design is just the latest in a long line of changes over the years. Microsoft has been trying many different ways to get people to use Skype messaging instead of competitors. Skype Qik was an attempt to take over mobile video messaging that flopped, and Microsoft has been tweaking its Skype mobile interface for years to better improve messaging. Nothing has had a big impact, and Skype is still widely used for video and audio calls. Microsoft has the user base and brand recognition for the calling part of Skype, but it’s desperate for Skype to be considered a true messaging service.
Source:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/1/15723594/microsoft-skype-redesign-features
Medellín, Colombia: My Ultimate Live And Invest Destination
The first place I ever recommended Americans think about retiring overseas was Costa Rica. That was back in 1985…30 plus years ago. A few years later I organized and promoted the first conference of my career, in San José.
Thinking back, I have to give it to the 40-odd souls who joined me in Costa Rica that year. What interrogations they must have endured from their family and friends. I mean, who retired overseas 30 years ago?
I continued to recommend Costa Rica as an appealing and affordable place to retire outside the box for maybe two decades. In that time, I also went on to recommend Ambergris Caye, Belize…Roatan, Honduras…Cuenca, Ecuador…and Boquete, Panama, among other places that, likewise, nobody at the time was talking about in this way.
I’m not overstating things. When I began making these kinds of suggestions, I was ignored, questioned suspiciously, and sometimes attacked as part of the lunatic fringe.
Today the idea of retiring outside the country where you happened to be living up until that point is no longer considered crazy. Today, The New York Times, the AARP, USA Today, cable news, and the rest of the mainstream media make these recommendations, too. Which is great. It’s nice having company in these ideas.
I make the point to provide context for the recommendation I’d like to offer now, which may seem like the craziest one of all.
About six years ago I finally took the advice of friends who had been nagging me for a long while to go see for myself a city they knew well, a city they described as pretty and pleasant, sophisticated and chic, welcoming and affordable…a city that was, most of all, they assured me, nothing like what I was probably expecting.
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I knew within hours of arriving in Medellin, Colombia, that everything my friends had said was true. Medellin, I became convinced very quickly, was on track to become one of the world’s most sought-after destinations, for both retiring and investing.
Specifically, Medellin offers:
Pleasant weather, meaning you can leave your windows open to the breeze and dine al fresco year-round…
World-class health care, including 5 of the top 35 hospitals in Latin America…
A rich cultural scene, with theater, orchestra, art galleries, and festivals that draw crowds from around the world…
An affordable cost of living…
Real-world infrastructure…living here you don’t want for anything…
Property costs that are a bargain on a global scale; it’s possible to buy at the best addresses in the city for as little as US$1,000 per square meter…
Investment upside, both in the form of rental yields and potential capital appreciation…
The best case when going overseas is when you can identify a place that is appealing both as a lifestyle choice and as an investment market. That’s the case in Medellin.
Three types of people should be paying attention to Colombia right now:
The investor: Prices are an absolute, global bargain. Costs of getting in are low, and demand is growing at an accelerating rate. Right now in Medellin, you could buy almost anything and feel confident that you could make money. Rental yields are running from 8% to 14% on good properties…
The retiree: This City of Flowers and Eternal Spring is going to become a top destination among North American retirees…mark my words…
The second-home buyer: More and more, I’m seeing people who are spending their summers in the United States or Europe but skipping out on the ice and snow by wintering in places where they can leave their windows open day and night, all year. These folks are bypassing the old-school snowbird haunts like Arizona and Florida and opting instead for the romance, the excitement, the adventure, and the affordable high-end lifestyle on offer in cities like Medellin.
We don’t always have the vision to jump when opportunity presents itself. Imagine if you had bought in Costa Rica in the mid-1980s…on Ambergris Caye, Belize, later in that decade…or in Panama City 15 years ago…
I recognized the opportunities in all these places at precisely those points in time, and I urged readers and friends to take advantage.
I see that same potential again right now, in Medellin.
The best way to appreciate the opportunity on offer in Medellin (or anywhere) is to come see for yourself. This, of course, is the big idea behind the country conferences that we sponsor each year. Could Medellin be the retirement or investment haven you seek? The best place in the world right now for you to think about reinventing and relaunching your life or diversifying your investment portfolio?
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One of the most anticipated hedge fund launches of 2017 keeps raising money
One of the most anticipated hedge fund launches of the year continues to rake in fresh money, despite a rough start in terms of performance.
Ben Melkman’s Light Sky Macro dropped about 3.5% from March through the end of April, according to an investor document reviewed by Business Insider. May performance numbers weren’t immediately clear.
The fund is continuing to raise assets, however, and is set to manage $1.5 billion on June 1, according to a person familiar with the matter. That makes Light Sky one of the biggest launches of the year, and marks a quick step up in raising fresh money; the fund managed around $880 million at the end of April, according to the investor document.
The fund is also soft-closing, which means that it will not accept money from new investors but may arrange for existing investors to add capital, the person said.
The fund is down at a time when other macro funds are struggling. Brevan Howard’s master fund is down 3.1% this year through the end of April, according to an investor document reviewed by Business Insider. Caxton Global dropped 6.6% through April 4, according to performance reported by HSBC. Discovery Capital Management was down about 12% through the first three weeks of May, and Rokos Capital dropped 4.7% in the first quarter, Bloomberg reported.
New York-based Light Sky Macro is led by Melkman, a former partner at Europe-based Brevan Howard Asset Management.
Melkman was the lead manager on Brevan Howard’s $500 million Argentina fund, which returned money to investors after delivering an 18% return since its inception.
His fund has been expanding, with high profile hires such as 15-year Deutsche Bank vet, Jérôme Saragoussi, as director of trading strategy. The fund recently added Deutsche Bank’s Luigi Gentile as a senior foreign exchange volatility trader and has 24 people on staff, the person familiar with the firm said.
The new fund’s investor list includes several big-name hedge funders, including Steve Cohen, Third Point’s Dan Loeb, Moore Capital’s Louis Bacon, Coatue’s Philippe Laffont, and Stone Milliner’s Jens-Peter Stein, Business Insider previously reported.
Source:
http://www.businessinsider.com/ben-melkman-light-sky-macro-hedge-fund-performance-2017-5
Soulmates and Unconditional Love
Are you searching for a soulmate or unconditional love? Your quest can set you on an impossible journey to find an ideal partner. The problem is twofold: People and relationships can never achieve perfection. Often unconditional and conditional love are confused.
Usually, we yearn for unconditional love because we didn’t receive it in childhood and fail to give it to ourselves. Of all relationships, parental love, particularly maternal love, is the most enduring form of unconditional love. (In prior generations, paternal love was thought of as conditional.) But in fact, most parents withdraw their love when they’re overstressed or when their children misbehave. To a child, even timeouts can feel like emotional abandonment. Thus, rightly or wrongly, most parents at times only love their children conditionally.
Is Unconditional Love Possible?
Unlike romantic love, unconditional love does not seek pleasure or gratification. Unconditional love is more a state of receptivity and allowing, which arises from our own “basic goodness,” says Trungpa Rimpoche. It’s the total acceptance of someone — a powerful energy emanating from the heart.
Love that is unconditional transcends time, place, behavior, and worldly concerns. We don’t decide whom we love, and sometimes don’t know why. The motives and reasons of the heart are unfathomable, writes Carson McCullers:
The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. . . The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. ~ The Ballad of the Sad Café (2005), p. 26
McCullers explains that most of us prefer to love than be loved:
. . . the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself. It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. ~ ibid
Ideally, the giving and receiving of unconditional love is a unitary experience. Couples experience this most frequently when falling in love. It also happens when someone fearlessly opens up to us in an intimate setting. It’s a being-to-being recognition of that which is unconditional in each of us, our humanity, as if to lovingly say, “Namaste,” meaning: “The God (or divine consciousness) within me salutes the God within you.” When we delight in another’s being-ness, boundaries may dissolve in what feels like spiritual experience. This allows energy to flow into places of resistance that surround our heart and can be deeply healing. It can happen during moments of vulnerability during therapy.
Yet, inevitably, these occurrences don’t last, and we return to our ordinary ego state — our conditioned self. We all have our preferences, idiosyncrasies, and particular tastes and needs, which have been conditioned by our upbringing, religion, society, and experiences. We also have limits about what we will and won’t accept in a relationship. When we love conditionally, it’s because we approve of our partner’s beliefs, needs, desires, and lifestyle. They match up with ours and give us comfort, companionship, and pleasure.
We’re fortunate to meet someone we can love conditionally and, at times, unconditionally. The combination of both forms of love in one relationship makes our attraction intense. It’s the closest we come to finding a soulmate.
Confusing Conditional and Unconditional Love
It causes stress and conflict when conditional and unconditional love don’t coexist. Frequently, people tend to confuse the two. I’ve met spouses who were great companions and best friends, but divorced because their relationship marriage lacked the intimate connection of unconditional love. This can be helped in marriage counseling when individuals learn empathy and the language of intimacy. (See my blog, “Your Intimacy Index.”) But it can lead to frustration and unhappiness if we try to force our heart to love unconditionally when other aspects of the relationship are unacceptable or important needs go unmet.
On the other hand, some couples fight all the time, but stay together because they share a deep, unconditional love for each other. In couples counseling, they can learn to communicate in healthier, non-defensive ways that allow their love to flow. I’ve seen couples married over 40 years experience a second honeymoon that’s better than their first!
Other times, the problems in the relationship concern basic values or needs, and the couple, or one partner, decides to separate despite their love. It’s a mistake to believe that unconditional love means we should accept abuse, infidelity, addiction, or other problems we can’t tolerate. The saying, “Love is not enough” is accurate. The relationship ends, but the individuals often go on loving each other — even despite prior violence — which mystifies onlookers, but it’s okay. Closing our heart in self-protection only hurts us. It limits our joy and aliveness.
Dating
Dating stirs up unrealistic hopes of finding constant, unconditional love. We’re liable to go from one lover to the next looking for our ideal soulmate. We may find someone who meets all of our conditions, yet doesn’t open our heart.
Or, unconditional love may naturally arise early on, but then we wonder if we can live with the other person day in and day out. Our conditional concerns and our struggles to accommodate each other’s needs and personal habits can eclipse the short-lived bliss of unconditional love.
The reverse can happen, too. Sometimes, during the romantic phase of love, people commit to marriage, not knowing their partner well. They don’t realize he or she lacks the necessary ingredients that are required to make a marriage work, such as cooperation, self-esteem, and communication and mutual problem-solving skills.
I don’t believe there is only one soulmate destined for each of us. It might seem so, because the conditional and unconditional rarely overlap. According to researcher and psychologist Robert Firestone, “It is difficult to find individuals who are mature enough emotionally to manifest love on a consistent basis. It is even more problematic to accept love when one does receive it.” Firestone theorizes that couples try to maintain an ersatz version of their initial love through a “fantasy bond,” replaying romantic words and gestures that lack authenticity and vulnerability. Partners feel lonely and disconnected from each other, even if the marriage looks good to others.
Opening the Heart
Unconditional love isn’t a high ideal we need to achieve. Actually, striving after it removes us from the experience. It’s always present as the unconditioned part of us — our “pure, primordial presence,” writes Buddhist psychologist John Welwood. He believes that we can glimpse it through mindfulness meditation. By observing our breath, we become more present and can appreciate our basic goodness. In mediation and in therapy, we find those places we choose to hide from ourselves and others.
In trying to reform ourselves, we necessarily create inner conflict, which alienates us from our true self and self-acceptance. (See Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You.) It reflects the belief that we can love ourselves provided we change. That is conditional love. It motivates us to seek unconditional love from others, when we need to give it to ourselves. The more we fight against ourselves, the more we constrict our hearts. Yet, it’s these disowned and unwanted parts of ourselves, which often give us the most problems, that are in the greatest need of our love and attention. Instead of self-judgment, exploration and empathy are necessary. People often enter therapy to change themselves, but hopefully come to accept themselves. Trying to change stems from shame and the premise that we’re inadequate and unlovable.
Source:
https://psychcentral.com/lib/soulmates-and-unconditional-love/
