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.
Crocodile tears. Derived from an ancient anecdote that crocodiles shed tears for the creature they are eating; the phrase has come to refer to a hypocritical display of false emotion. Insincerity. Sometimes worse– a show of emotion to lull someone in to sharing their story or revealing their vulnerabilities only to use that information against them. Dante reserved his 8th circle of Hell (out of 9, with 9 being worst) for the fraudulent–the hucksters, the corrupt politicians, the panderers and seducers, the false teachers, the perjurers and liars.
Why are they so bad? Perhaps it is because trust is so sacred, a bridge to community, a link between people that keeps us all from chucking it and living like recluses behind a bush. But also, perhaps it is because we do not come with built in BS meters. We are born trusting; we have to learn cynicism. And the way we learn that is to be let down, over and over, by the insincere. And when that harm makes us close off and guard, we become less than what we really are.
So the solution, it seems, is to fight back, not with insincerity of our own, but with authenticity and vulnerability come what may, to keep putting it out there every day, in every circumstance with truth and love and a whole heart. To be sincere. Authenticity and sincerity will help heal those damaged by crocodile tears, and they definitely won’t land us in one of Dante’s circles.
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?
Otters sleep holding hands. In the open water, it would be so easy for them to drift away from each other in the ebb and flow of the tides. They also use kelp to wrap around themselves, but there is something about the image of sleeping otters holding hands to stay connected that is utterly endearing.
We, too, bounce around in rough seas, and it is easy to drift away from those we love. Distractions, distance, inattentiveness add up until you are apart, in the storm separately, rather than braving it together.
Today, work to avoid the drift away from those you love.
Of all the compliments you could receive, perhaps the best is that you feel like shelter. That, in all the storms and chaos that swirl around us, talking to you feels like safety. Not in the sense of being a yes man or echo chamber, or even in the sense of being able to do anything to stop the storm, but in the sense of home.
“I find it shelter when I speak to you,” says Emily Dickinson. What might we do and say to make someone feel that way? Shelter implies that the storm is still swirling, the elements are still fierce, but talking to you is a respite from that and an entry into something welcoming and safe. A place where you are known, and heard, and cared for. A place of comfort.
Certainly there are plenty of people making themselves someone’s storm. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be someone’s shelter instead?
What can you do in this increasingly chaotic and exhausting world for someone to find it shelter when they talk with you?
What does it take to prevent a country fracturing from disagreements and divisions? Perhaps it is the same thing that keeps any relationship from severing. First, a deep desire for reconciliation. A laying down of arms. A recognition that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and that there is value and growth in working things out. Next, perhaps would be a deep humility, a recognition that one side doesn’t have all the answers while the other is ignorant and foolish, but an understanding that both sides have stories to tell and an eagerness to be heard. And finally, perhaps would come respect. Each side coming together voluntarily, knowing their future strength is in union rather than destruction.
We wish for peace but quarrel with our neighbor. We tremble from talk of war but allow ourselves to respond to others with hate, sarcasm, anger, and animosity. We expect leaders to be the adults in the room, but mock and deride them mercilessly. Peace, it seems, is something for other people out there to do and strive for because we are angry and fed up and impatient, and peace isn’t in our everyday lexicon at the moment.
But we can fight for peace, by controlling ourselves, treating each other respectfully, and speaking out against injustice. Take a minute to watch this beautiful video.
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin with me
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be
With God as our father
Brothers all are we
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony
Let peace begin with me
Let this be the moment now
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow
To take each moment
And live each moment
To take each moment
And live each moment
To take each moment
And live each moment
In peace eternally
Let there be peace on earth
Let there be peace on earth
Let there be peace on earth
And let it begin
With me (me)
With me
Songwriters: Jill Jackson / Sy Miller
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.
Are you broken? Lost?
Lights will guide you home.
Consider the story of The Tenth Goose told by Richard R. Powell in his book Wabi Sabi for Writers:
Nine Canada geese lift off a clear mountain lake; droplets from their wings cast lines of rings behind them on the glassy surface as they rise. Light gray feathers reflect amber light from the early morning sun, a clean glow off each curved body. You watch their broad wings grip air, watch nine bodies rise and fall in rhythm against the dark forest behind them. Each bird’s neck kinks in counter-time to its wing beats so that all nine heads remain level and each set of eyes gazes steadily out at the cool dawn, bright mystery of sight amid the shiny black head feathers. Closer now, you make out the expressionless curve of their beaks, see one goose’s thin moist tongue as she honks; hear the whistle of air across wing feathers as they pass over your head. Then you notice that there is a tenth goose far back, low to the water, working hard to catch up, honking softly, as if each wing beat hurts. This goose loses a feather as she passes close over you and you watch the feather spiral and glide to the ground. You pick it up and it looks perfect, each barbule lying neatly against its neighbor, the tiny whorl of fluff near the calamus soft to the touch. Then you see that the shaft is not perfect; it is cracked open from the middle to the tip.
You keep that feather, tuck it under the strap around your car’s sun visor, look at it every day you drive to work and remember the tenth goose. Remember your own efforts to keep up. And somehow, that tenth goose gives you courage. You wonder if she will find enough food or if winter will separate her from the rest, separate her from life. She speaks to you in a dream one night. In the distracted moments of the day she speaks to you, in the elevator or while you wait in traffic. Then one night she is there in your dream again, as silent as her feather in your car. She tips her head at you and that beak, with its lumpy prominence like a Roman nose, bobs up and down and you realize she is giving you permission to speak. In the dream you speak and she turns her head to hear you and you tell her your fear of dying and your hopes while living and she comes and rattles her beak between your fingers.
There is beauty and strength in the broken places, a beauty that continues on even when everything is a struggle, that faces setbacks with determination. Sometimes we are one of the nine geese, sure and strong, in sync, but sometimes we are the tenth goose struggling to keep up. And there is beauty in that, too:
It is a kind of beauty on the edge of defeat, a beauty tenacious and brave, and it is the beauty left behind when the warm, honking goose is gone. And not just flown away–but dead and gone. That feather remains as a testament to the beauty in living; and even when the feather dries and cracks and is eventually eaten by insects or the drab extension of time, it will live on in the imaginations of those who hear the story of the tenth goose.
Remember the Story of the Tenth Goose and take heart.
And, for a treat, here is Coldplay.
None of us knows what the future holds. But we do know the values we hold dear—honesty, integrity, love, compassion, empathy, respect, tolerance. As we raise our children, we instill these values. As adults, we model these values whether we win or lose, succeed or fail, sink or swim. Watching us, they learn, and, as they go forward into their futures, they will bring these values to their own decisions. If each of us does this, we will leave the world a better brighter place for our having been here.
QuotableCreek.com 