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Go naked.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

naked

We wear many masks and fluff ourselves up with many props, but how’s that working for us? Nikki Giovanni notices:

A lot of people refuse to do things because they don’t want to go naked, don’t want to go without a guarantee. But that’s what’s got to happen. You go naked until you die.

What guarantees do we have in this life anyway? To health, to wealth, to job security, to happiness? Not so much. There really aren’t any guarantees to anything we do, and we delude ourselves to think otherwise. When we ‘go naked’ we engage from a place of authenticity, without the masks and props. We, our actual selves, enter into this thing called life.

J.K. Rowling notes:

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all– in which case, you fail by default.

This is it, our one shot, our one life, and we owe it to ourselves to go into it as ourselves and with gusto.

Misery won’t touch you gentle

Posted on by Shari Swanson

misery

Oh, child. How I wish for you to have a life without misery and heartache, a world without disillusionment and betrayal, a childhood unmarred by neglect or abuse, a journey without conflict. But, alas, that will not be. We do not live in a utopian world, but here in this world, and you will  know sorrow and pain and, as much as I would love to shield and protect you from it, I cannot. There will be dark days, my love.

But you are brighter than the darkness, and, even in your misery, you will find a way to shine. And when you are at your lowest point, I will be there beside you knowing that you will rise again and that this pain will make you more compassionate and humble, more honest and fierce, more determined to make this world a more perfect place, because you, my beautiful child, are not meant to be kept down in the darkness, but to shine.

Read.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

boyread

Reading opens our hearts. There may be no better way to stand in someone else’s shoes and look at the world from their point of view, to understand a life and world experience wholly different from our own. The inevitable result of experiencing the world from someone else’s perspective is empathy. And empathy moves us closer into recognizing our kinship, one and all.

Rain, rain, go away.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

dreamrainer

We can’t choose everything in life, but we can choose what kind of person we want to be. We can choose to be encouraging and supportive, rather than bleak and pessimistic.

We can avoid being the person who rains on someone else’s parade.

Who aren’t you seeing?

Posted on by Shari Swanson

invisible

Who don’t you see? So much of our reality is defined by our perception, the things we see and focus on, the things we dismiss as background. But some of that background we can walk right by is human–people who serve us dinner, wash our cars, stock our grocery stores, people begging on the street, people next to us on the bus, people in crowds. Sometimes it’s not just that we don’t notice, we avert our eyes.

Imagine what it would be like to someone who people overlook, whose voice is unheard, who is there but unnoticed. After a while, you might question your own reality. Are you…invisible? Do you matter?

There is so much good we can do by simply noticing each other. Smiling in greeting. Looking people in the eye. Acknowledging that we are all on this shared journey of life together, for this moment on the same page of the story.

We can see each other.

 

Begin with a dream

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Harriet

Every great dream begins with a dreamer. There is nothing that has ever happened to help this world that didn’t start with someone believing the world could be better and dreaming of a way to make it so. No matter how wildly unbelievable or preposterous the dream, someone had the audacity to challenge the status quo and the tenacity to make it happen.

What is your dream? How will you reach for the stars to change the world?

How to carry a heavy load

Posted on by Shari Swanson

load

We are weighed down. The tasks ahead seem dauntless; the burdens great. There is so much to be done, and seemingly so little time. Yet, we know that others before us have been able to carry heavy burdens with grace and inner strength. How do they do it? Some ideas:

Evaluate your load. Is it really yours to carry? Holding on to other people’s problems is debilitating because we have no control over their actions. Similarly, feeling like you’re bearing the weight of a global problem on just our own shoulders is both unrealistic and unnecessary. We can help and support someone struggling, and work with others toward a common goal on larger problems, and those are properly our burdens, but we can’t force someone to behave as we would have them, and we, alone, cannot solve a problem like world hunger and peace that is so much greater than any one person. We must discern how best to offer our support and efforts, but realize that, sometimes, the ultimate solutions are beyond our control.

Focus on the gift of that present moment. It is easy to get overwhelmed in a crisis. We see or experience them daily, but when we focus on the present moment as an opportunity to help others, our perception shifts away from the weight of the burden to the lightness that comes from helping others. Yes, there is a refugee crisis, but perhaps we can help. Yes, we’ve lost our job, but perhaps that is an opportunity to do something we’ve dreamed about. Part of the burden that comes from bad things happening is trying to hold on to the world as it existed before the crisis. We mourn the loss and rail against the unfairness. But when we lay that down, and focus on the new reality and challenges present now, in the life we have now, we feel lighter.

Recognize a larger perspective. We will not always be here in this dark place. A new day will come bringing new possibilities and circumstances. We must hold on and look for the bigger picture, remembering that there are ebbs and flows to life, and that this too shall pass.

Ask for help. Sometimes we best carry our burdens by letting someone else share them. We are made to support each other. Perhaps helping you with your burden is the answer to someone else who feels that they lack purpose. Win-win. Life will surprise you that way.

Yes, we are burdened. Life can be hard. As M. Scott Peck says in The Road Less Traveled,

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult–once we truly understand and accept it–then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

Amaze yourself. We are stronger than we realize and braver and smarter and more capable, and sometimes we just have to close our eyes and push forward. For inspiration, consider this video of an actual burden and use it as a metaphor for the burdens you face today:

 

 

You’ve got this.

 

 

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To thine own self be true

Posted on by Shari Swanson

trueself

You’re unique, let’s face it. And, despite what the world may try to tell you with advertising, cliques, and trends, your individuality is your strength. There are so many ways we are alike as people, and that’s important to notice because it shows us that we are all one, interconnected and kin.

But the ways we each stand out from the crowd are important to highlight, too. We each have different gifts and talents, hopes and dreams, yearnings and accomplishments, history and life lessons, strengths and weaknesses, past and present, all rolled into a one-of-a-kind package. There is no being just like everybody else because no one else is exactly like you. Those differences define you and are your super power because you can offer the world something that no one else can give: you.

And always one more time.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

mayalove

It takes courage to love, doesn’t it? Particularly after we’ve been hurt and know how vulnerable we can be. How much safer it would be to protect ourselves from being completely known, from loving wholeheartedly, from reaching out to others. But living behind a facade is a recipe for loneliness. Walling others out also walls us in. Going it alone directly contradicts the foundational truth that we are all interconnected whether we choose to be or not.

Love is the great adventure. It is the answer to the what, how, and why we are here. So have the courage to trust love one more time…and always one more time.

Consider the hummingbird

Posted on by Shari Swanson

hummingdoyle

In his essay, Joyas Volardores, Brian Doyle begins with a very close look at a hummingbird, a creature whose heart makes up a good bit of its tiny body. They are remarkable creatures. We, too, are creatures whose hearts makes up a good bit of us, and Doyle ends his essay with a look at how our hearts, no matter how we protect ourselves and wall them off, are imminently fragile, with facades that can be shattered in an instant.

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one in the end—not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman’s second glance, a child’s apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words I have something to tell you, a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother’s papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father’s voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children.

Today, consider the hummingbird. Let it fill us with wonder and appreciation for all of creation, but especially our own hearts, and let it remind us of how tender and fragile each of is really, truth be told.