In front of audiences with beaming faces
(In what I thought were regular places)
I dreamt there was an explosion
Of singers, musicians, images, and light
Into perfect harmonies of sound and sight
So transforming the once mundane
That I
Deeply moved, exclaimed,
“Whoever came up with this is brilliant!”
Then I woke
To find the subconsious me
Had channeled this creating unknowingly
Somehow stumbling unto the holiest place
From the most everyday and commonplace
When my head is turned
I will miss the catch
I must be ready and not distracted
If I want to catch it
Trading this moment for the next
May seem easier
But is not recommended
As a reliable investment
Forever is composed of Nows
Try and catch a few
Life is much more laughable than I often make it
Worried so much about that which will be obsolete and irrelevant
In such an astonishingly short time
Not that our lives are not sacred,
They are certainly that
Yet our circumstantial concerns often miniscule
A phantasma of a morning fog
A puff of smoke
Dust in the wind
All good and perfectly sane reasons
To ease up
Enjoy the show
And get on with walking each other home
A good dose of Matt Haig will help.
Everything
Everything
Meant to prod us
To look harder for beauty
Everywhere
Everywhere
Just one example:
If all I get out of this life
Is the edge knocked off the way I look
At people I know
And don’t
It is enough
It makes no sense to believe my thoughts and judgments
Without standing them up against my biases
My unimpressive record
And my deflecting
Self-serving nonsense
But that is what I will do
Unless I look in the mirror
And see that it is only me
One that is so much like you
It is not love that should be depicted as blind, but self-love. –Voltaire
The freedom from the fear of opinions
Or the constraint of my own about myself
Is forever a frustrating undertaking
Unless I learn the ease of accepting myself for all I am
With open, conciliatory arms
There will be no open, conciliatory arms for others
Until I have them available for myself
And what makes this easier done than said
Is rather than stupid, fat, ugly, superior, wiser, or right
I pronounce myself (wait for it) gloriously human
My task was never to be something I wasn’t
My task was to be everything I was
And that was always enough
To be the piece of the puzzle that fits
Perfectly where it was meant to fit
That’s all
And in that complete picture
All the inexplicable becomes explicable
All my powerlessness becomes power
If we argue with reality, we only lose 100 percent of the time. -Byron Katie
Today is a perfect day to practice.
Live it or resist it.
I’m going to grow over it.
I am happiest when grounded in purpose and flourishing in service. The trick is remembering that circumstances cannot keep me from these states. This book is a jumpstart to that place.
“There is a cap on earthly success, a ceiling on the amount of joy that possessions and awards can bring before disillusionment sets in. Our appearance, our prosperity, the applause; all of it is so fleeting. But a life of true significance has unlimited impact.”
-Viola Davis
“To examine, to question, to discover and evolve–that is what it means to be alive.”
-Cicely Tyson
“Ms. Tyson has discovered her elixir; …an existence grounded in purpose and flourishing in service to others.” -Viola Davis
To obsess about what I want or believe I must have
Disproportionately
To any other concern
Is the fatal step over the logical/pathological line
Beside his own person and his own interests, nothing is sacred to the psychopath. -Erik Larson
Reinforcing this idea, the life-saving epiphany of Romy Hausmann’s protagonist in Dear Child was that her oppressor’s brutality was fueled by “love,” albeit a malignant love for what he so desperately wanted.
It is easy to distance myself from this label, but as much as I might contend that I am not a psychopath, my own flavor of ego-driven behaviors will also create destructive dysfunction.
Bryon Katie starts the topic of people who do mean things with, “If we believed what they believe, we might do the same things.”
Two-Minute Tune-Up 