Why worry about aliens destroying the earth
When we do that all by ourselves?
Why fear strangers when most homicides
Are domestic?
Why do I try to fix you
When I haven’t fixed me?
work
Deciding This and That
The moments that define me
Are not always obvious
Such as today when I decided not to panic
When I felt overwhelmed
Or when I decided not to be defensive
When my motives were questioned
Or when I decided not to blame someone or something
For my discontent
These slight trajectory changes
Put me on a peace train
A train stopping at different stations
Opportunity Cost
All this time
I could have smiled at myself
And made it easier for you to smile at me
Instead
I may have thought too much
About why you were not smiling at me
And made everyone sad
Or confused or irritated or mad
It was never your job to like me
It was mine
It was never your job to be what I “needed” you to be
It was mine to be what I could be for me
So that we could both smile at the future
And make the most of this lifetime of opportunity
Messy Is What We Are
Just saving myself the suffering
Inflicted by whining
About this thing and that thing
By acknowledging
We are only barely beginners
At living
Messy is what we are
Yet there is still beauty
And learning
And growing
And loving
The problem is not that the world is a mess, but that we expect it to be otherwise.
And how could it be otherwise
When we are only novices leading novices
Interns at free will?
The Inefficiency of Worry
If I can just go with it
And quit resisting what is
And what will be
What energy
I could save for
My next season
Certain to come
With so much more
Time Well Spent
If I choose to be here
Rather than in the quicksand of yesterday
Or in the fog of tomorrow
I can stop the pain in my head, heart
Gut, limbs, and eyes
I will first have to talk myself into living
(Rather than complaining about living
Or other nonsense)
Initially not easily done yet will become so
With time well spent
Easing Up on Ourselves
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.
It Will Be There When We Need It
Things feel so much more hopeless late at night
Than they will in the morning
And problems of the coming years so much scarier
Than those we have already mastered
Yet here we are at midnight
Attempting to fortify ourselves
For what is coming with the scarcest scraps
Of yesterday’s leftovers
Rather than trust that the resources
So needed for later will come
For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice
As the world revolves from night to day
So we evolve from survival to mastery
So Much Talent
I am stunned by the amount of talent I didn’t know was out there
Talent I have yet to appreciate
So many writers, so many athletes, so many great minds
Technicians, inventors, singers, dancers, comedians
Connectors, caregivers, and healers
And I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the realization
That the only explanation for that much talent in the world
Is that everyone has their share of it
Including those who think they don’t
When I Am Anxious
When he is anxious
Cool nerd writer, John Green
Just gives himself permission to suck
And by so doing
Liberates himself to liberate others
If I do the same
What gifts for others could surface?
What peaceful paths discovered
Laced through my mistakes
And weaved through the blunders?
Two-Minute Tune-Up 