Tag Archives: Three Truths and One Wish

Three Truths and One Wish

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1. Truth: Vacation gives you an important break from your regular life. Especially if you go somewhere, anywhere. You don’t have to mow the lawn or go to work. You can ignore your email and the phone. You can get up when you want, take a nap when you want, eat when and what you want. Spend all day in your pajamas reading a book, or go for the longest walk, find someplace beautiful and quiet and stay there. You can relax and slow down, rest or play.

2. Truth: Taking a break will give you new perspective on your regular life. If you take a long enough break, everything will feel new and strange upon return. Has the trash always been on the left side? How long has it been since I really saw that picture? You might find yourself wandering the aisle of your favorite grocery store in amazement. You realize how fast your internet truly is, how comfortable your bed, how lucky you are to be able to recycle and compost. You remember what’s important, and know for sure that if that specific chore doesn’t get finished today, no one is going to die, and that you can get by and be happy with so much less.

3. Truth: In the first moments, those initial days after your return, there is a magic opportunity for transformation. You have remembered that you can be or do anything you want, remembered who you truly are without all the trying and obligation, and that you are already fundamentally f r e e. Your regular life will stretch out before you like the gift it is, and you’ll barely be able to contain your joy because you know that anything is possible.

One Wish: That you give yourself this gift of vacation, retreat, reflection and rest, even if you can only manage it for a single day. That through this you remember that you are basically good, fundamentally wise and kind, and that you have the power to change things.

Three Truths and One Wish

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As I mentioned yesterday, today is movie day with my mom. I am leaving early in the morning to drive over to the valley, so I have set this post, which I actually put together yesterday, to auto-publish.

As I was trying to come up with my own three truths, I kept coming back to things I’d seen recently, written by three other amazing women. Statements profound and precise, phrases that cracked me wide open, my heart spilling over it’s edges, becoming equally softer and more fierce with their force, their rightness. So today’s three truths are not my words, but they are certainly my truths.

1. Truth from Susan Piver: who you really are is the offering. She sent this one in the Open Heart Project Practitioner newsletter on the day I arrived in Portland for the World Domination Summit (WDS). Reading this, and later remembering it gave me such comfort as I approached that event.

Being genuine, letting who you are rise to the surface, is actually the point of the spiritual path. We don’t meditate to become great meditators. We meditate to become who we really are… As it turns out, this is also how we offer our most precious gifts to this world. And when there is one genuine-hearted warrior in the room, it calls forth the genuineness of others. Thus it is an act of compassion to simply be yourself.

2. Truth from Fiona at Writing Our Way Home: you aren’t alone. Oh wow. This is exactly how I felt the first day of WDS, how I feel so often, but I have never been able to describe it so smartly.

I always feel wobbly in new groups. I want strangers to know how brilliant I am, to feel that I am contributing something valuable, & to love me. I can wait around five minutes for this to happen.

This can be challenging if they have already known each other for many years, or don’t really need anything, or are human beings.

3. Truth from Cheryl Stayed, as Dear Sugar: all that time was not wasted. This one makes me cry every time I read it.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

One wish: That we all realize, recover or remember who we really are, brilliant and precious exactly as we are, messy and stinky, a little broken and bruised, “tiny beautiful things” that are a gift, an offering, a wish and a prayer and a promise, every one of us.