So we’re going to Naples, Fla., in April. Now, some of you may know that I’m married to the self-appointed Energy Czar. And while everyone has been flying everywhere, my travels have been mostly with Rick Steves, or taking virtual tours online, or when I get my friend Frankie’s gorgeous photographs from her exotic travels — I can imagine myself in her worlds, and I’ve actually been satisfied and haven’t complained. Except sometimes when it’s gray outside and someone sends a photo of turquoise water and white sand. I must admit, I get a little envious and wish I were married to a normal person who can get on a plane once a year, for God’s sake. 

I’ve at least convinced the man not to put friends down when they say they’re going to Thailand or St. Bart’s, or to see the fjords in Norway. He no longer lectures them and makes them feel guilty with his stream of facts, starting with, “Are you aware of the fact that a Boeing 747, just to cross the U.S., puts out over 400,000 pounds of carbon dioxide? And in case you have forgotten, carbon cioxide is a greenhouse gas that stays in the atmosphere for at least 100 years. It’s mostly responsible for the global warming we are experiencing right now.”

He stopped saying those things when I told him no one is going to change. It’s too much of a paradigm shift, you are mostly making people feel uncomfortable, and what’s the point? The response my niece gives him is ubiquitous: “The plane is going anyway. I might as well be on it.” 

So why am I getting to go to Naples, Fla., in April, you might ask? Did I drug the man? Hypnotize him? Give him a frontal lobotomy? No. I’ll tell you why. I had open-heart surgery, and the guy thought I was going to die. He is so grateful, I swear if I wanted to go to Paris for the weekend, we’d be in the air right this minute. 

It’s amazing how love and fear and all emotions transcend facts and figures and ideologies.

I have been listening to one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Gary Zukav (author of “The Seat of the Soul” and “The Dancing Wu Li Masters”), and yesterday I heard him say one of the most profound things I’ve ever heard. He was holding a picture of his wife, Linda. I’m assuming she must have died. I don’t know the details, but he said, “When Liinda and I were first in love, I just loved her, but I have come to realize in these later years that I loved loving her, and now I love loving everyone.” 

That’s kind of the way I felt when I first found my teacher, Ram Dass. I just fell in love with everyone. Ram Dass had said, “I’m not interested in being a ‘lover.’ I’m interested in only being love.” He said his practice was seeing the beloved in everyone. He said Mother Teresa described this kind of love as seeing Christ in all his distressing disguises.

It became my practice, but I’ve kind of lost that initial high, that sensation of being connected to everyone, even people whose politics and lifestyles were as far from mine as possible. I stopped judging people and myself. But I’ve kind of lost that initial high, of seeing everyone as the beloved. 

I know I’ve written about this before, but it’s such a perfect example of where I was in those early, heady, magic years of spiritual connection. 

My son Josh’s birthday falls near Halloween, so when he was young, I would drive around to all the pumpkin patches in all the surrounding towns looking for the perfect round, orange pumpkins. 

But the year I found Ram Dass, I started seeing the beauty in the misshapen pumpkins, the ones with pockmarks and green bulges and wobbly bases, the stems broken off, the ones I wouldn’t have even considered before. After a year of listening to his tapes, I stopped needing things to be different from what they were and started seeing things as they really are: perfect.

It didn’t last, that way of being, and I want that back. 

And now my husband has it. And that’s why we’re going to Naples.