the light is hitting your face in such a nice way today. you look splendid.
are you tired? I am tired. this is a difficult time. sometimes the strategies we have for difficult times work, and sometimes they don’t. let’s stay flexible.
drink your water. floss. go to bed earlier. in the words of the oracle of the movement, there is always enough time to do the right work.* move at the pace of the breath, and if the breath is too fast, stop. slow it down. pay it attention, like it could save your life. because it will.
move your body, ideally in a way that pleases and delights you. release fully and entirely the notion that it has to look any particular way as you do so. the movement might be slow or it might be fast, but let it move, let it respond to the space around it, let it work with and against gravity, let it feel air on your skin, let it build the warmth of push and pull and effort inside you. let the sensation make enough noise that you stop listening to the ticker tape of your own thoughts.
look for the rhythm of the natural world, and align yourself with it. yes, we’ve hurt her deeply, and she’s aching badly right now. and she is still continuing to ripen fruit, to coax flowers open and introduce them to insects, to put on fine colors, to bed down for a long, heavy nap. can we turn toward the rhythm she’s showing us, and tune our lives to it? if we do, if we diligently turn toward it and listen, and adapt, it will teach us to make lives that are less fraught with struggle.
sitting with yourself in discomfort is not easy. without the breath, it is impossible. even if it feels short and shallow, take a breath. take another, slower. feel the full and the empty. feel the breath in you come and then go. each breath changes the discomfort just a little. eventually, you’ll be able to feel the change.
did you eat yet?
many people have done this before you. it feels hard because it is hard, but you are not the first. before you were born, people were working hard, feeding their families and keeping their children in decent clothes and shoes. and and when they were without, they were leaning on each other. yes, this is a mountain. it is sharp and wild, and you are tired of climbing, and your feet are cut and the air is thin. and you are not the first person to climb it. the ancestors at the top are waiting on you.
no one has done this before. no one has tried to survive public health/racial&reproductive justice/climate change/global pandemic crises all while trying to keep their kids in shoes, make rent, and while asking the Big Questions: what is meaning? what is suffering? are we alone? what happens now? who is coming? so cut yourself a break, because what you are doing is hard, brand new, and no one can do it for you. you’ll screw it up. your neighbors will screw it up. your leaders and teachers will screw it up. grace is like a magic well: the more you dip into it, the more there is to share. so keep filling your bucket.
photo by joel drzycimski
a thing is sacred because we make it sacred. bread. breath. water. sandalwood paste. wool. a gesture. a word. an action. an embrace. a renunciation. a ritual. it means what we mean it to mean. so light a flame, pour out a libation, utter a sound and seal it with a gesture, an incantation, a mark. find the repetition of value and beauty in your life and make meaning.
eliminate anything from your day-to-day that is not moving you toward clarity, stability, and compassion. frivolity is good on occasion, but beware that occasional becomes habitual, for there we fall from rest into collapse. consider: rest is generative. collapse is possessive: it takes from you and leaves you with nothing but sticky fingers, malnourishment, and a space full of anxiety longing for time that will not come back.
ask for help.
offer help.
accept help.
seek silence whenever possible and appropriate. there is noise everywhere, and some of it is useful, but most of it is only trying to steal your time, attention, information, and energy. music is a gift, but if you are filling the space with it to distract from emptiness or silence, it becomes the same grating din as the talking heads and the clickbait and the machines. listen t your breath. listen to far away sounds. listen to the poetry in the silence.
draw me a picture. draw yourself a picture. who cares of what, just put the pencil onto the paper and make it move. shape, color, texture. draw a self-portrait of how you feel today. keep breathing. and now frame it. or burn it. or hang it on the refrigerator. look what you made.
are you doing too much? why? are you busy, or overcommitted? what can you let go of? hard as it is to hold, the world can live without you. the decision to do more than you can do comes purely out of your ego. set a boundary. say no, kindly and sincerely. accept the limitations of your own human existence. you are not the whole world, and you can do a lot, but you cannot do everything. have you learned this yet? it is simply, blessedly true. you cannot do everything. please stop trying. draw a bright, blessed line around what is yours, and kiss the rest to god/dess.
laugh. read poetry. concentrate. simplify. do not hide from what is difficult, and look for what is beautiful in all things. if there is someone, somewhere, who can look at you in your most insecure, petulant, ignorant, thoughtless, heartless, frightened moment and see something worth loving—and there is—then you can do that for someone else.
I’m glad you’re here.
*adrienne marie brown, emergent strategy