choices

What is it you plan on doing with your one wild and precious life?

Posted on by Shari Swanson

In her poem, The Summer Day, Mary Oliver writes:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

What does it mean to pray? What exactly is a prayer? Is it reciting certain words in unison at a church on Sundays, or is it also something infinitely more?

Is it noticing the creator in the delicate creation? Is it paying attention? Is it being grateful? Is it flinging yourself down on the grass to contemplate not just the meaning of life, but the meaning of your life?

Yes, life is short, over far too soon. But, while we are here, there is opportunity. To pray, to notice, to attend, to use our lives to make a difference.

What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Who is my neighbor?

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Sometimes I feel everything in life comes down to the question, ‘Who is my neighbor?’ 

We are always asking, ‘This one, too?’ And the answer is always, ‘Yes’.

The felon, the refugee, the homeless person, the enemy, the one who hurt you, the one you disagree with, the one who makes your life hard? Yes, always yes. 

Love your neighbor. This one, too.

Leaving the world a bit better.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

We all want to succeed, but what is the metric for measuring whether we’ve been successful? There are so many. Money, status, power, bucket lists, fame, travel… but what of the little things? Are you successful if you have enough money to buy a small country but no one to love or trust? Is it success if you are famous but lonely? If you have power but wield it to cause pain and misfortune to others, how can that be considered success? If you’ve traveled the world but not been truly present anywhere, does that count?

Perhaps true success at this thing called life is as simple as Emerson’s thoughts above. To leave the world a bit better, to ease the burdens of others, to look for and bring out the best in others, to do no harm. These all matter, maybe not in measurable concrete ways, but in ways we can all feel and appreciate if not count. More important, these are all things we each can do. We have the ability to be successful beyond our wildest imaginings.

And don’t forget to laugh often and much. Finding the joy and not letting it slip right past you undetected is important, too.

Sowing the right kind of seeds.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

The potential for a loving relationship is in one embrace. The potential for peace is in forgiveness. The potential for harmony is in stillness. The potential for quality conversation is in listening.

Consider the opportunities you have to make your world and the world in general a better kinder place with the actions you sow today.

Thorns or roses?

Posted on by Shari Swanson

If you look for thorns, you’ll see thorns. If you look for love, you’ll see it all around you. And if you look for opportunities to make a difference, to shower people with love, and to take a stand for all that is good and right in the world, those opportunities will be there.

What opportunities do you see in the day ahead?

Need a sense of youthful wonder?

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Adulting isn’t for the faint of heart. Responsibilities, worries, concerns for the future can weigh us down and make us nostalgic for the carefree days of youth. But, perhaps, there’s a remedy.

When was the last time you started something new? An art, language, trip, habit? Maybe followed a lifelong dream. Perhaps it is scary to become a ballerina at 60+ years old, but doesn’t it sound delightful? Or perhaps learn how to refinish cast-off furniture. Or speak a different language.

These are the ones I’m thinking of, what would you try? As we age, being a beginner is harder. We worry about embarrassment, or struggle with not knowing everything already. Or perhaps we think if we try something like this, we have to be a professional and don’t give ourselves permission to be bad at it. We’ve forgotten the joy in just immersing ourselves in something new.

Julia Cameron says:

Often, when we say it is ‘too late’ for us to begin something, what we are really saying is that we aren’t willing to be a beginner. But when we are willing to dip our toe in, even just a little. We are rewarded with a sense of youthful wonder. Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never.

There is always something new and exciting around the corner just waiting to experience.

Everyday saints.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Sometimes I think saints must have been extraordinary people, somehow different from the rest of us lugs, vested, perhaps, with some superior spiritual gifts or insights.

But then I realize, as did Vonnegut below, nope, just people like us, doing their best.

Whether we are ever canonized or not, this is our ‘job,’ isn’t it? To ‘behave decently in an indecent society’.

And then comes the hard part, to trust that your behaving decently will make a difference, whether you ever know about it or not.

Just keep making those ripples.

Your imperfect offering.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

Perfection can be the enemy of progress. When we need to move forward, we often wait until we come up with a perfect solution, sometimes so long that the opportunity to make our contribution passes. It is not only ok to be fallible, it is all we’ve got to work with: Our imperfect, fallible, often short-sighted selves doing our best to make the world a better place right here, right now, with what is right in front of us.

Take a minute to watch this lovely video of Leonard Cohen singing a reminder that perfection isn’t an option; we must do our best now.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6wRYjtvIYK0%3Ffeature%3Doembed

I shall not pass this way again.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

There is an elephant in the room. We don’t talk about it, we try not to think about it, we pretend it doesn’t exist. That elephant is the fact that we are all on a one way journey through this life. Our time is limited. None of us knows in advance when our end of the journey will come, but that end will come.

When we pull ourselves out of denial and gaze directly at this elephant, we can realize something important: our opportunities should be seized now. That good we can do? Don’t put it off. That kind word? Say it. That gift or remembrance? Give it now.

We will not have this place and time and opportunity to make a difference again.

Wiping the dust off our souls.

Posted on by Shari Swanson

It is so easy to get discouraged when living a creative life. Your words are criticized; your paintings don’t sell. “They” don’t believe you have any promise. Sometimes the struggle to be commercially successful in a creative field can be so daunting that you abandon the art. But then you remember that art isn’t about “them” or “success” or “critical acclaim” at all. It’s about bringing your truths into the light, being creative, pushing yourself, being you.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the case of Henri Rousseau, a forty year old toll collector who wanted to paint. His work was derided, and yet he continued. He found joy in the painting. Not until the end of his life did anyone take his work seriously. As summarized by Maria Popova:

Long before history came to celebrate him as one of the greatest artists of his era, long before he was honored by major retrospectives by such iconic institutions as the MoMA and the Tate Museum, long before Sylvia Plath began weaving homages to him into her poetry, he spent a lifetime being not merely dismissed but ridiculed. And yet Rousseau — who was born into poverty, began working alongside his plumber father as a young boy, still worked as a toll collector by the age of forty, and was entirely self-taught in painting — withstood the unending barrage of harsh criticism with which his art was met during his entire life, and continued to paint from a deep place of creative conviction, with an irrepressible impulse to make art anyway…. [Rousseau’s life is] an emboldening real-life story, and a stunningly illustrated one, of remarkable resilience and optimism in the face of public criticism, of cultivating a center so solid and a creative vision so unflinching that no outside attack can demolish it and obstruct its transmutation into greatness.

The message from Rousseau’s life speaks to all of us: he was a success all along. He persevered with a remarkable resilience to produce work that spoke to him and pursued a passion that made him happy. That, the pursuit of great art, rather than the financial success was what gave his journey depth and meaning and lifted up his soul.