“You’ll become known for doing what you do. It’s a simple saying, but it’s true…The only way to start being asked to do something you want to do is to start doing that thing on your own.” ~Jonathan Harris
I kept myself busy with so many responsibilities. I took them on because they needed to be done, but more, because they seemed like the best way to keep from feeling crazy. When I slowed down, when I rested, when I stopped, my mind fought against the silence, the space, the calm. But, in truth, silence, space, and calm was what my heart wanted most; what I needed most. It took time, but I learned that it’s not in working harder, faster, or smarter; but in sitting, resting, and leaning that feeling crazy eventually vanishes, that transformation comes, that love shows up.
4. Wisdom from Anna Quindlen, “The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”
Emotional eating is an attempt to avoid the absence (of love, comfort, knowing what to do) when we find ourselves in the desert of a particular moment, feeling, situation. In the process of resisting the emptiness, in the act of turning away from our feelings, of trying and trying again to lose the same twenty, fifty, eighty pounds, we ignore what could utterly transform us.
But when we welcome what we most want to avoid, we evoke that in us that is not a story, not caught in the past, not some old image of ourselves. We evoke divinity itself. And in doing so, we can hold emptiness, old hurts, fear in our cupped hands and behold our missing hearts.
“The closer we grow to our inner light, the more we feel the natural urge to share that light with others. The meaning of work, whatever its form, is that it be used to heal the world. Love is the most powerful fuel in any endeavor. The most important question to ask about any work is ‘How does this serve the world?’”
~quote from a desk calendar, April 20, that hangs over artist and creator of the Mutts comic strip Patrick McDonnell’s desk, which he paraphrases as “Love is the most important thing in any endeavor.”
At some point, we need to stop identifying with our weaknesses and shift our allegiance to our basic goodness. It’s highly beneficial to understand that our limitations are not absolute and monolithic, but relative and removable.
22. Wisdom from Eve Ensler,
An activist is someone who cannot help but fight for something. That person is not usually motivated by a need for power or money or fame, but in fact is driven slightly mad by some injustice, some cruelty, some unfairness, so much so that he or she is compelled by some internal moral engine to act to make it better.
23. In one of the latest Hopeful World newsletters, Jen Lemen described what would happen first if you decided love is the most important thing. About what comes next, she says,
This is what must come next. The breaking. Because without it your heart will be two sizes too small, and you cannot have a small heart for the kind of love that is waiting for you. No. Your heart will have to be much bigger, much, much bigger. So big that some of the places in it will be empty. So big that the outer exterior of it will not seal the insides completely, so that someone passing by who would like to peek in will actually be able to make out your shadow in between the cracks where the light gets in.
This big cracked heart will be needed for your new life, for all the love that is waiting, so the little heart has to go. Don’t despair when you feel it breaking. Breaking is reserved for the most lion-hearted among us, and you are of that number. Didn’t you realize? We knew it from the second we saw you, acting so foolishly for your ridiculous, far-fetched dreams.
Jen is one of the only people who can give me the bad news, the hard truth, and I feel okay about it. Part of me wants to share the whole newsletter with you, but instead I’ll just tell you to sign up to get it in your own inbox.
Don’t wait for the world to clear out time and space for your dreams and your art. It doesn’t happen that way. The world rushes in, and always will. Wait for things to be perfect and you’ll die waiting. Push back a bit. You go get yourself a kitchen timer and clear out your own little space. You’ll be amazed what happens.
1. No Time to Think on The New York Times, Sunday Review, (thanks to Jeff for sharing).
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 