(Keeping some of these public because I’m moved to. )
I read the other day a quote from a random self-help guru that I thought that was interesting and worthy of contemplation. “Life will present you with people and circumstances to reveal where you’re not free.” More on that later.
The other week, a couple of conversations shook things loose in my thought process (as convoluted as it can be) as part of my consideration for this next chapter of life. The next 10 years will look considerably different than the last 10, and experience has demonstrated that it will go more quickly than I can imagine. Earlier this year I was playing with the idea (and necessity) for creative destruction. I have a pretty rich metaphorical garden, and at times you need to not only reap but also weed. To make room for new things and to give air to the things I want to grow more fully.
As I’m considering refining my intent and vision for these next years, I am informed by two important poems. The first is one that I found somewhere – before the internet, probably in a random book – and had taped to my dorm room wall. By William Ellery Channing, an early 19th centry Unitarian minister:
To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
and wealthy not rich.
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes,
and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
The other is one by Rumi, called “The Guest House”:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Both of those speak to an idea of being able to be present and to embrace – authentically – what is right in front of us. Which has always been a work in progress for me (as any of you who have heard me talk about that BNL song know). And while I’ve always had both of these up somewhere to see at most points in my life, it feel as if I need them as reminders less than i did. I used to need the reminder to model the behavior, but now it feels as if I’ve moved to (mostly) embodying that from a fundamental level. Not that I’m always successful – I can be avoidant with the best of them, at times.
But I not only seek out opportunities to explore what I might be blind to, I try to embrace the people and situations that reveal those to me. And when I say my blind spots, its not as if I am looking for things that are broken to fix , but to understand the parameters that I operate under better. And I do feel like I know myself well enough that I am not prone to be surprised, but there is always another nuance of facet that is helpful to understand. Even understanding and accepting my own powerlessness is useful.
Circling back to that original quote, it feels as if while life does give you those opportunities to illuminate your inner world, not many people are seeing them as opportunities, let alone open to what it might teach them. The people that I seem to gravitate toward feel similarly curious, open and undaunted about their own internal worlds.