Maybe you’re older, or weaker, or not quite as sharp as you used to be. Maybe your energy is fading, or you’ve gotten depressed and overwhelmed. Maybe all your ducks aren’t in a row, and all your bells don’t ring. Maybe you don’t think you can make a difference.
It is in just such times that you must press on. Your gifts are needed. The world doesn’t need you to be perfect; it needs you to show up.
Ring your bell.
is so easy to work, work, work, building up our resumés. Noses to the grindstone. Shouldering on. Or for those who aren’t in jobs any longer, filling our days with tasks, scrolling the news. But, when it all comes to a stop, when we are done on this Earth, have we built up what really matters?
Will we leave behind people who loved us, who we loved with everything we had to give while we had the chance to give it? Have we showed our people how much they mean to us? Have we dared to truly love?
Or will we leave too much left unsaid, unfelt, unloved?
We still have time to choose.
Never forget you are surrounded by miracles. Like, for instance, birds.
Amy Tan writes:
No waiting for doom. Try waiting for a bird to come to your backyard instead. Any bird. They are all little miracles. They fly. They sing. Some migrate thousands of miles. And they are the descendants of dinosaurs.
This Purple Finch is a rare bird in my yard. I used to see one every few years and now I have four, two males and two females. Seeing them makes any day a lucky day.
Those twitters and peeps, that honking or quacking overhead, evidence of miracles around you.
Nowhere can you experience life from someone else’s point of view better than in a book. You can feel what it is like to be another gender, race, lifeform. Time is no limitation–you might experience life now, in the past, in the future. Opening those pages allows you to step inside someone else’s shoes. And that can’t help but change you, stretch your empathy, and expand your experience.
What would it be like if you could talk over things with those characters? Ask them about life in their shoes?
In a very cool project, doing exactly that, library patrons have the chance to check out a human book. Hopefully the human book they check out will be someone with a different life experience and perspective.
So check out a book, or maybe talk with someone as unlike from you as you can find. You’ll be surprised at all the things you have in common.
When you have the power, or are on top, or when everything is going your way, it’s only natural to want to strut. You don’t want to think about a time when you might be powerless, on the bottom, or have the world against you.
That’s a downer, isn’t it?
But that’s exactly where religion urges us to go, to think about the world from other perspectives, to consider what life is like for people without your privilege, to have empathy with the unfortunate. Because, after all, if you were in their shoes, wouldn’t you hope they would look out for you?
Have you ever had a conversation where what you have to say doesn’t even seem to be part of the conversation? Someone can ask you how you are, and you reply, and they just go on talking about whatever is on their mind as if you’ve not said anything? It’s really more a monologue than a dialogue, since only their concerns are discussed.
It’s frustrating. And lonely to be in that kind of conversation.
Listening is such an easy way to show concern and care for someone else. Responding to what they say, being engaged, asking questions, actually including them in the conversation rather than treating them like they’re only there to hear what you have to say.
In this world of increasing narcissism, self-absorption, and loneliness, listening needs to make a comeback. Not just listening while you’re thinking up what your response will be or how you can divert the conversation back to you and your concerns, but listening. Real listening.
Perhaps the person you’re talking to could really use an opportunity to be heard.
Apparently, one day in 1922, Albert Einstein was caught short, unable to leave a tip on his lunch bill. Instead, he scrolled:
“A quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.”
Einstein hoped his words would prove valuable to the young waiter some day. Ironically, that scrolled message recently fetched over a million dollars at auction. More valuable, indeed.
But, setting humor aside, isn’t Einstein right? What are the moments that bring us joy?
Are they in the hustle and bustle and endless striving, or are they in life’s quiet moments, those moments with no posturing, no striving, no achieving? Just being.
There is something about close attention, to anything really, that leads to awe. Take a cat, for example, and really study it. The whiskers, the sprinkle of freckles where the whiskers emerge, the expressions, the ear tufts, the velvet nose, and so on.
Before long, you’ll understand why they were (and are) revered. And while you’re taking in the details, you might stumble onto awe.
Jason Silva, an ‘awe pioneer’ says,
We fit the universe through our brains and it come out as nothing less than poetry. We have a responsibility to awe.
Enjoy his discussion on the value of awe here.
As he says: ‘Awe is an antidote to existential dread.’ Finding a way to tap into awe can have enormous benefits for our mental well-being.
In 2016, Pope Francis sainted Mother Teresa. She was a beloved paragon of a selfless life, ministering to the poor and dying, shining a light on the importance of the little things and the love of family. After her death, her diaries showed her struggles with doubt. Once feeling clearly called to her mission, in the last several decades of her life she felt God’s absence. She said,
Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love–and now become as the most hated one–the one–You have thrown away as unwanted–unloved. I call, I cling, I want–and there is no One to answer–no One on Whom I can cling–no, No One.–Alone … Where is my Faith–even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness–My God–how painful is this unknown pain–I have no Faith–I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart–& make me suffer untold agony.
So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them–because of the blasphemy–If there be God –please forgive me–When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven–there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul.–I am told God loves me–and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?
And on until her death, she felt God’s absence, rather than his presence. And yet she persisted doing the work to which she had been called, living a life of faith.
Some may call her a hypocrite to have an outward smile of peace and an inner crisis of faith, but isn’t her struggle every one’s struggle? Who among us doesn’t struggle with doubt? Don’t we all rely on faith when our paths grow dark and twisting?
St. Teresa of Calcutta inspires us to hang on during the dark nights of the soul, to continue to walk the walk, to be faithful and steadfast, and to shine light in the dark places. She can aptly be considered the Patron Saint of Doubters.
It’s too easy to forget that we are of this earth. Our agendas and business suits disguise us. Our tasks distract us.
But we are sensuous beings, of the earth and for the earth. We, like the tree frog, are part of creation. How lovely it is to remember that, to appreciate our moment of life in the grand scheme of things, to feel the wind in our hair and the grass under our feet. To drink deep of this moment when we are here.
We are here.
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