I’ve been writing about transformation so much lately because that’s the phase of life that I’m in, but the shadow side is I keep bracing for the worst-case scenario. It’s perfectly reasonable, sensical, even, but that also means my hope for things working out or going the way I’d like is at a nadir.
Hope is so tricky. We’re told, “Don’t get your hopes up,” but also, “Expect the best and get it.” We’re told, “To live without hope is to cease to live.” But also, “Hope, in reality, is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.” Hope is dangerous, hope is life-affirming. Which is it?
I wish I had an answer but I can only speak for myself – it’s extremely difficult for me to live without hope and this week was a tender reminder that maybe it’s OK for me to hope again. I’ll give a small example. I’ve been pitching my novel to literary agents and keep hearing “no” or nothing at all, which is the same thing. It’s gotten to the point where I expect to be rejected. And listen, I know that’s the reality of publishing, I understand it’s rife with rejections from basically every angle, but that doesn’t make it any easier to handle.
Maybe things will work out? Photo by Marc-Olivier Jodoin on Unsplash
In this state, I went to my Network Spinal Analysis chiropractor, who makes gentle contacts on my spine that cue my body to notice and then resolve tension. I started wriggling and writhing on the table, and after I sat up, burst into tears because I felt like maybe I could have hope again. Maybe it’s possible for me to not experience the worst-case scenario. I’m pitching to two literary agents in person next month and I started to feel excited about the similarities in what they’re looking for and what I’m offering.
Then, still at the chiropractor’s, I pulled an oracle card that said, “Faith in the process,” and I burst into tears (again). The meditation to accompany the card is saying aloud:
“I now ask that all disappointing experiences of the past that have led me to believe that life is not trustworthy or that faith is a silly or immature way to deal with life, be released from my mind, body, and heart. I ask for help to accept that I can and will attract all that is needed into my life, at the perfect time and in the perfect way. I ask to be empowered to absolutely receive all that can assist me with gratitude and without shame or guilt. In doing so, I dedicate myself to be a clear, loving, open channel for the flow of life. I know the benefit in doing so is not limited to me, but will flow so that life can benefit others through me. I trust in this now, through unconditional love, so be it.”
I think you can understand why I started crying. And at the same time, it still feels scary to hope for what I want. I’m so tired of being disappointed. But what I’m coming to, again, is summed up by that quote from the Bhagavad Giita: “You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.” I can keep taking actions in every arena of my life, but what happens later? Not in my hands. But that doesn’t mean I have to shut down hope altogether.
I dream of a world where we understand it’s not helpful to become attached to certain outcomes. A world where we take inspired action but let go of the results. A world where instead of getting rid of hope, we allow ourselves to reconnect to it in a soft and gentle way.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’m at the point where most of my friends are talking about getting older, and they’re grieving the fact they no longer have the same sense of possibility about their future like they did when they were younger. The essence is, “The world is no longer my oyster.” But have you actually thought about that expression? Oysters are closed, tight, dark. They’re not warm, open, or inviting.
Does that mean when we use that expression, we’re saying the world is a tightly closed, dark place? Or are we saying that we’re the precious jewelry formed in oysters, a pearl? If so, that’s not particularly flattering either. Natural pearls are formed when a parasite works its way into an oyster, and as a defense mechanism, the oyster coats the irritant with layer after layer until voila! A pearl.
That’s kind of gross to think about, but honestly, where I’m at in my life, that tracks. The world can be scary, uncomfortable, uncertain, filled with irritants, but through that experience, we emerge as pearls. We come out different from what we were before, and without knowing the exact shape we’ll be in when we emerge.
Seems kinda irritating. Photo by Thomas John on Unsplash
It’s not only pearls that come from hardship. There are wildflowers that only grow because they were exposed to high heat from fires, which is called scarification. Spiritual teacher Tosha Silver talks about this, too. She says, “True surrender to Love isn’t just about being ‘guided.’ It’s a freakin holy alchemy that you can neither control nor predict. You are ravished. You are changed.” I wish this weren’t true, and I wish I were changed and shaped in the ways that fit with my vision, but, well, that’s never happened.
My spiritual practice is about finding God in everything – the mundane and the extraordinary, the suffering and the ease. There is nowhere I can go to escape the divine, and that means God is here, too, in the transformation process, in the wars, in the famine. In all of it. How will we be different on the other side? Will we be bright and shiny pearls, stronger as a result of living in the dark, confined, irritating spaces? Maybe. It’s something I, personally, am hoping for.
I dream of a world where we remember that if the world is our oyster, that means we are the pearl. A world where we understand beauty and transformation arise from hardship, and that’s always been so. A world where we recognize life is a path of change. A world where we understand, in essence, we are all on the path of the pearl.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
You may already know this, but AI safety researcher Mrinank Sharma resigned recently. That’s not really news in and of itself – people leave their positions all the time. No, the newsworthy part is that he left Anthropic, best known for its chatbot Claude, to study, drumroll please: poetry. Yes, poetry.
The context is what makes the whole thing fascinating. My friend and narrative astrologer Ada Pembroke sums it up nicely: “[S]omeone who spent years trying to build AI safety guardrails has decided the answer isn’t better guardrails. The answer is wisdom. And he’s going to look for wisdom the way humans always have: through art, through language that means more than one thing, through the practice of courageous speech.”
To be honest with you, I struggle with poetry. I’m a highly literal person and I want people to say what they mean and mean what they say. But Ada suggests poetry is powerful precisely because it’s not that (mostly). Poetry collapses multiple symbols all into one. It encourages us to dive deeper, to look again, and that’s what AI cannot do because it, too, is very literal. And per her second point, poetry can be courageous.
The pen is still mighty! Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
I’ve known for ages that journalists are frequently jailed for their writing. Reporting the truth can be dangerous in a time when governments want to function on lies. What permeated my brain less is that poets are also jailed. In 2024, 375 writers were jailed in connection with their speech, according to PEN America’s Freedom to Write Index, and 67 of them were poets. In Myanmar, poets led protests with poetry readings to support civil resistance following the military’s February 2021 coup; several were arrested and detained.
In Iran, poets who posted and recited poetry on social media were arrested by authorities looking to silence support for the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. In a few places, poets are jailed not for months but for years. As PEN America puts it: “Authoritarian leaders target poets because their words – filled with lyricism, story, and feeling – can expose the cracks of oppression in daily life.”
My spiritual teacher encourages people to make art not for art’s sake but for service and blessedness, meaning, to spur their love of the divine. He says artists are pioneers and can lead society forward. Literature in particular is “that which moves together with the society, which leads society towards true fulfillment and welfare by providing the inspiration for service,” he says. “People seek deliverance from the whirlpools of darkness; they aspire to illuminate their lives and minds with ever-new light. In all their actions, in all their feelings, there is an inherent tendency to move forward; therefore, if at all they are to be offered something, the creator of art cannot remain idle or inert.”
What my spiritual teacher is pointing to is the power of art. It’s not merely commerce, a way to make a quick buck, but a tool for good or evil. Art influences people, whether they want to admit it or not, and in this age of AI slop, original, human-created art that speaks to the times we live in is potent.
I dream of a world where we remember that art still matters. A world where we understand there can be more to art than just amusing people or trying to capitalize on a trend. A world where we remember art and literature can be a tool of service and inspiration. A world where we recognize the power of art and use it accordingly.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I wrote this post in April 2019 after I was fired from a job that wouldn’t let me work from home two days a week, despite having a doctor’s note saying I needed that setup. Oh, the irony that a year later everyone was working from home. . .Despite different circumstances, this post is still relevant today. Enjoy.
You know how people say most of the things they’re afraid of never happen? The opposite is true for me – most of the things I’ve feared have happened. Not the fleeting, “I’m scared I’ll miss my flight” things, but the “I’m scared I’ll be broken into” things. The recurring fears, the ones that cause my stomach to roil and my chest to constrict.
I want to take a moment here to recognize my fears are those of a privileged white woman. I totally understand that other people lead tougher lives than I do, with fears greater than mine. I understand I have a relatively easy, cushy life. I’m not here to get into a competition about that. Rather, the point of this post is to talk about fear and resilience.
For much of my life, I’ve braced myself for terrible things. I’ve done my best to ward them off, but they happened anyway. And because they happened, I feel less afraid now. I no longer have to fear the worst because the worst has happened and I’ve lived to tell the tale. It also means I know how to take care of myself in challenging times. If I have to endure a hardship again, I will because I did before.
We are more powerful than we know. Photo by Felix Mittermeier on Unsplash
Researcher and storyteller Brené Brown writes about this character trait, resilience, in her book Rising Strong. She said, “While vulnerability is the birthplace of many of the fulfilling experiences we long for – love, belonging, joy, creativity, and trust, to name a few – the process of regaining our emotional footing in the midst of struggle is where our courage is tested and our values are forged. Rising strong after a fall is how we cultivate wholeheartedness in our lives; it’s the process that teaches us the most about who we are.”
Check and check. I used to think of myself as a scaredy cat. As someone sensitive and fragile. And I am, but at the same time, I’m also tough. I’m brave. I’m strong. I’m resilient. I pick myself up again and again. When life kicks me in the teeth, I collapse, I cry, but then I do the hard thing and move through it. I’ve already surmounted many obstacles in my life. And I know if I don’t currently have the tools to get through whatever is before me, I will hunt tirelessly to find the right ones. This ties into spirituality because the backbone is faith.
My spiritual teacher says over and over again if a person takes shelter in the Supreme, they need not be afraid of anything in this world. That the divine is “more courageous than the most courageous and braver than the bravest. Those who take shelter in [the divine] are therefore bound to acquire these qualities: courage, bravery, chivalry, and so on. Once endowed with such qualities, what is there to fear?”
I’m a human being, so I still fear many things, but I know the more I lean into the presence of my higher power, the better I feel. The more I surrender, the more I recognize everything is an expression of an infinite loving consciousness; the more relaxed I become, and also the more fearless. There’s a quote floating around about how the devil whispered in a warrior’s ear: “You’re not strong enough to withstand the storm.” And then the warrior responded, “I am the storm.” That’s what it feels like right now. And if you’re going through a hard time, I hope you can muster up that same spirit.
I dream of a world where we recognize our resilience. A world where we understand we’re able to tackle all the challenges coming our way. A world where we become more and more fearless because we understand not only are we strong enough to withstand the storm, but that we are the storm.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I watched a retelling of Cinderella that absolutely gutted me because it was so sad, so unjust. I’m not going to link to it because I’m about to give major spoilers, but if you’d like to see it, message me. This adult version of the story was told from the perspective of one of the stepsisters, Drizilla, and in it, Cinderella was a manipulative psychopath who lied, cheated, and stole. The story ends with Drizella in a sanatorium, not visited by a single person, while Cinderella became a princess.
So again, not a “happily ever after” kind of story. Not a “feel-good” kind of story. It was a brutal story that touched on something very important, which Drizella said near the end: “No one really wants the truth. Not when the truth is ugly, and the liar is beautiful.” Yeeees. The truth is ugly, uncomfortable. It often asks something of us. It forces us to look at something we’d rather not look at because it challenges our worldview or a belief we have about someone or ourselves. It’s much easier, in some ways, to keep living a lie.
Sometimes the truth is ugly. Photo by Michael Carruth on Unsplash
I see this with politics – elected officials lie all the time. They sell a story because it sounds good. It’s much easier to say, “We’re investigating fraud in states that just happen to be Democratic-led,” rather than, “We plan to bully and terrorize people who disagree with us.” It sounds reasonable to investigate fraud, which it is, but why is the investigation selective? That’s not a baseless example, by the way. In the past few days, the Trump Administration announced it is investigating fraud in 14 blue states. But just the blue ones, not the red ones. How convenient.
But here’s the thing about truth. As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote in her latest memoir, “The truth has legs. It always stands. When everything else in the room has blown up or dissolved away, the only thing left standing will be the truth.” The way I like to think of it is you cannot escape reality. It will grab you by the collar and shake you. It will force you to look it in the face even when every part of you is trying to turn your head. You cannot escape reality any more than you can escape death.
This relates to spirituality because in Sanskrit, the unchangeable entity is Sat. The external manifestation of Sat is satya, or benevolent truthfulness. My spiritual teacher said, “Only satya or truth triumphs and not falsehood. Whenever there is a clash between truth and untruth, truth’s victory is inevitable. … Untruth, being a moving phenomenon, may attain a temporary victory on its march, but never a permanent one. … Falsehood does not win because it is relative, it is ever-changing.”
I take comfort in knowing that eventually the truth will come out. That falsehood doesn’t win because it goes against the unchangeable entity. That people can try to run away from the truth but they can’t run forever. Eventually, truth finds us all and the question becomes, what are we going to do about it?
I dream of a world where we understand a lie is often easier to swallow than the truth. A world where we recognize that even though it seems like lies are winning, their victory is only temporary. A world where we recognize we cannot escape the truth even if we try. A world where we remember the truth always comes out eventually, even when it’s ugly.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I had an interesting experience with certainty on Saturday night. I went to a Democratic Socialists of America teach-in where they discussed how veganism feeds anticapitalism and vice versa. They served dinner and I was SURE I’d be able to eat almost nothing because while I’m vegan, I don’t eat onions and garlic, which are basically in everything. It turns out they ordered food from one of a handful of restaurants that don’t cook with those ingredients!
And then on the way home, all the transit apps said my bus was on time (it wasn’t). I was certain I’d missed my connecting bus because of the delay, which, again, all of the transit apps said would be the case, but I didn’t! The connecting bus was also late, which meant I waited a grand total of 2 minutes rather than the 15 I begrudgingly anticipated. Here was the trickster working in my favor. I usually think of the trickster as the disruptive force that makes it rain on your wedding day, but sometimes the trickster can work to your benefit.
These experiences around uncertainty reminded me of a quote a friend shared. Painter Paul Cézanne said, “We live in a rainbow of chaos.” I don’t know about you but I don’t naturally associate “rainbow” with “chaos.” I don’t think of chaos and unpredictability as beautiful. I think of them as dark, ugly, something to be avoided at all costs. But that’s not the full story, is it? As the Post-It note on my bathroom mirror says, “Remember: Life can be surprising and delightful.”
Is it a rainbow? Yes? It is chaos? Also yes. Photo by Luca Upper on Unsplash
Life can be chaotic and beautiful. Uncertain and joyful. It’s all of it. Life is a broad range of experiences and I do better when I embrace that. There’s a psychological concept that supports this called emodiversity, which means letting yourself feel an abundant range of emotions – not just the pleasant ones. A study of 37,000 people found that those who do that have better mental health, decreased depression, better physical health, and know how to handle a wide range of behavioral situations.
Diversity is the name of the game over and over again. Diversity in emotions. Diversity in the gut microbiome. Diversity in the gene pool. We are stronger with diversity. My spiritual teacher says:
“Some people say that disparity is the order of nature; therefore, there must be differences between one group and another, between rich and poor, etc. However, such a proposition is fundamentally incorrect. Instead, it is correct to say that diversity is the order of providence. One must remember that identicality is disowned by nature – nature will not support identicality. Whenever identicality occurs, a sort of structural explosion takes place and the entire structure is broken into pieces. So diversity is the law of nature and identicality can never be.”
He’s talking specifically about social structures but the concept also applies to our internal diversity, or in this case, our internal range of emotions and experiences. Life is meant to be a rainbow of chaos, and instead of becoming something to fear, I’m learning it’s something I can enjoy.
I dream of a world where we recognize the only certainty we’ll ever have is that life is uncertain. A world where we understand chaos and unpredictability don’t have to be bad things. A world where we embrace our full range of emotions and accept diversity internally and externally. A world where we remember we live in a rainbow of chaos.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I’m sick and feel unable to record the audio for this post. Also, I’m pretty sure no one wants to hear me sniffling anyway. In terms of why I’m resharing this post from August 2021, I honestly don’t know, but it’s what kept ringing through my head. Maybe someone out there really needs to hear it. Enjoy.
I keep thinking about an essay I read in the book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum. He writes about how he lived at the dead end of a dead-end street, two blocks long, at the bottom of a hill in north Seattle. At the top of the hill, two big yellow and black signs declared: STREET ENDS. And at the end of the street where Fulghum resided, another big sign with stripes and reflectors stated the obvious: DEAD END.
You could see that “DEAD END” sign a long way off – in other words, the dead end didn’t sneak up on you. However, what’s so remarkable is people drove down the street anyway and seemed to be baffled when the street did, in fact, end.
These signs aren’t just for decoration. Photo by fr0ggy5 on Unsplash
Fulghum writes:
“Not just part way, mind you. Not just to where the reality of the situation cleared up. No, sir. They drove all the way down, right up to the sign, the big black one with stripes, the one that said DEAD END.
“And they read that sign two or three times. As if they were foreigners and had to translate the English. They looked on either side of the sign to see if there was a way around it. Sometimes they sat there for two or three minutes adjusting their minds …. There was no pattern. All kinds of vehicles, all kinds of people, broad daylight and pitch dark. Even a police car a couple of times. And once a fire truck.
“Innate skepticism or innate stupidity? I confess I do not know. A psychiatrist friend tells me it’s a sample of an unconscious need to deny – that everyone wants the road or The Way to continue on instead of ending. So you drive as far as you can, even when you can clearly read the sign. You want to think you are exempt, that it doesn’t apply to you. But it does.”
His last two lines especially strike me. We want to think we are exempt, that whatever we’re confronting – a dead-end street, a deadly virus, whatever – doesn’t apply to us. But it does. I’d wager the majority of us want to feel special. We want to be right, to know the truth, and even when there’s evidence demonstrating we’re wrong, we can’t accept it. Why is that? I think one reason is U.S. culture doesn’t have many examples of people saying, “I don’t know.”
Instead of saying, “I don’t know,” we make something up, we pretend to know. We try to save face versus practicing humility and admitting, “I don’t know,” or even, “Maybe I’m wrong.” Who says maybe I’m wrong these days?!? I can’t remember the last time I heard in a public space someone open to the possibility they don’t know everything. It’s as if due to the internet and having so much knowledge at our fingertips, we’re loath to say, “I don’t know” or “I could be wrong.”
Also likely wrapped up in “I don’t know” is fear. My spiritual teacher says, “Humans do not fear to tread a known path, but they always hesitate and fear to travel unknown paths.” Sometimes those unknown paths are intellectual ones. It’s far easier to cling to a thought or belief you learned early on and is corroborated by friends and family than to change your mind and believe something new. But that’s the beautiful thing about the mind – it can be changed.
There’s nothing shameful or humiliating about saying, “I don’t know,” or “I was wrong.” No human is omniscient. We aren’t supposed to know everything, and that means we’d be better off acknowledging that’s true. We’d also be better off accepting reality when it’s staring us in the face – like when we’re confronted with a dead-end street.
I dream of a world where we understand that if there’s a road sign that says “DEAD END,” the street ends. A world we understand if we think we know something other people don’t, we’re likely deluding ourselves. A world where we’re OK with some uncertainty and we embrace the power of saying, “I don’t know” and “Maybe I’m wrong.” A world where we all learn from dead-end streets.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I don’t have a good reason as to why I’m resharing this post from September 2017 – I didn’t rewatch Hamlet, for instance – but it’s what we call in the journalism world “an evergreen,” meaning it’s relevant at any time. Enjoy.
This weekend, I watched Hamlet with a friend of mine and remarked how the play touched me in a way it didn’t when I was a teenager. I’ve seen Hamlet on numerous occasions, I’ve heard the famous soliloquy a million times, and even unknowingly quoted from the play in this blog.
Hamlet is a story I’m familiar with, but watching it this weekend, I could relate to him; I understood him in a way I hadn’t before. No, my uncle did not kill my father and marry my mother, but I, too, have experienced anger, grief, and despair. As I watched Hamlet this weekend, all I could think was, “Me too.” I wouldn’t have taken the actions he took, but I empathize with his feelings in a way I didn’t before.
We all feel the same things. Photo by Maxim Berg on Unsplash
I’m reminded of that quote by Maya Angelou, who said, “We are all human; therefore, nothing human can be alien to us.” Yes! I’m not a scholar, but it seems to me Shakespeare’s work endures because he taps into the essence of what it means to be human, with all the pain, glory, comedy, and tragedy. One minute, Hamlet is contemplating suicide, and the next, his friends burst through the door, talking and laughing. That’s certainly how my life is. I think I mentioned it here, but literally the day after I found out my co-worker died, I unintentionally participated in a wedding held in my neighbor’s backyard. My windows were open, so the sounds of the ceremony wafted through the air. Life is tragic and comic, something Shakespeare understood and illustrated.
Even though he wrote his plays hundreds of years ago, they’re still relevant. There is no emotion anyone has ever felt that I haven’t felt too. Our experiences? Highly variable. Our emotions? The same. I bring this up because I wonder how things would be different if we all held this viewpoint. Instead of calling Mexicans rapists like a certain high-ranking official, instead of calling people aliens, what if we recognized that we are all human and thus nothing human can be alien to us?
My spiritual teacher said:
Human society comprises various races. There is no reason whatever to recognize one race as superior to another race. The external differences in constitutions among these human groups cannot alter their basic human traits – love and affection, pleasure and pain, hunger and thirst. These basic biological instincts and mental propensities equally predominate in human beings of all complexions in all countries and in all ages. A mere rustic, illiterate, half-naked tribal mother of an unknown hamlet … in India bears deep maternal affections for her young children; in the same way, a well-educated mother of a locality of New York pours out of her heart a great love for her own children.
The subterranean flow of love and affection exists in all hearts alike. Every person cries out in pain, everyone feels pleasure when there are occasions of joy and happiness. [F]undamentally, their mental existences flow along the same channels of ideas and consciousness. Containing the same cosmic momentum and under the same cosmic inspiration, they all have set out for a tryst with the same destiny.
That means we have more similarities than differences. We are all like one another. We are all human, and we’d do well to recognize that.
I dream of a world where we recognize we all have the same human emotions. A world where we remember there is nothing anyone can feel that we also haven’t felt, and vice versa. A world where we understand we aren’t so alien from each other, and in fact, humans aren’t aliens at all.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I was never a Girl Scout but you’d think I was because I’m always prepared. Not only do I have an earthquake kit, I also have a camping stove so I can still eat cooked food in that circumstance. If you need something, I probably have it. One time, I was in the car with someone who realized her food was undersalted, and I literally pulled out a mini salt shaker from my purse. Why am I like this? Because thinking ahead, preparing, and planning make me feel safer.
Sometimes this strategy works (i.e., preparing for an earthquake), but often it’s a waste of time because I imagine scenarios that never happen and conversations that never take place. Essentially, I try to predict the future so I can feel safe in the present. The thinking goes, “If I know what will happen, then I won’t be surprised, and if I’m not surprised, I’ll feel safe. I’ll be able to handle the situation.” But, well, I’m terrible at predicting the future. Even something as small as, “This is what I’ll be doing next week.” Over and over again, life throws me into unpredictable scenarios and situations.
A constant lesson lately – maybe it’s lifelong – is to stay present. Not only is joy found in the present, but safety, too. When I’m present, when I’m here, now, I can respond to what’s before me from a cool, level-headed place. It guards me against reactivity. When I’m present in the here and now, I’m accessing the wise self, the one who knows what to do. It’s tough because my default mode is to “future trip” or worry and obsess about the future.
Sometimes being here, now, means putting a hand on the heart. Photo by Fa Barboza on Unsplash
Again, I do this because I want to feel safe. It’s not a character flaw – it’s a coping strategy. But what I’m learning is there are better ways to cope. Instead of imagining what I’ll say to so-and-so or contemplating whether XYZ will happen, I’m coming back to me. It’s better for me to say to my inner child – because let’s be real, it’s usually her who is freaking out – “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not ever going anywhere. I can handle this. You don’t need to worry about it.”
Even typing that I exhaled deeply, which is a sure sign that I’m relaxed and regulated. Relaxed and regulated equals safe. When I don’t feel safe, my breathing is fast and shallow; I’m not grounded, and not in my body. And that brings me to my next point – what I’m learning is that safety is something that must be felt in the body by bringing in the body.
Gabor Maté says, “Safety is not the absence of threat; it is the presence of connection.” Sometimes that means being connected to others, but sometimes that means being connected to the self. I can’t control what other people are doing, but I can control what I’m doing. I can connect with myself not by spinning out about future scenarios but by being here, now. I can connect with myself by putting my hand on my heart and talking to myself like I would a friend. I can connect with myself by letting my exhales be longer than my inhales.
I care a lot about safety and what I’m learning is that it only exists in the present. And furthermore, it only exists if I’m connected – to myself, to others, and to the Divine Beloved. May you also experience that connection, if you so wish.
I dream of a world where we understand we can’t always think our way into safety. A world where we understand we can prepare for some things but not others. A world where we recognize safety happens in the present. A world where we let ourselves feel safe by connecting.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I watched a clip of Netflix’s “Famous Last Words: Jane Goodall” and started tearing up. That woman was an icon, a messenger of hope, and someone who remained consistent until her dying breath. She exemplified neohumanism, a concept in my spiritual tradition, that begs the question, “What is the boundary of your identity?”
Neohumanism encourages bridge building not only with other people, but also with plants and animals. For Jane, she saw animals not as heartless brutes, but as beings that have rich inner lives just as humans do. They cry, experience joy, and have other emotions. From a Mongabay news piece I read, “She blurred the categorical wall that placed humans above other animals. Her work became foundational not only for primatology, but for animal welfare and environmental ethics.”
But she wasn’t an animal rights activist who said, “Screw all the humans! You’re terrible!” Instead, she tried to connect with people she didn’t see eye-to-eye with. She said, “If you don’t talk to people you disagree with, how can you expect them to change?” She understood that being a purist or isolating yourself from others only creates more isolation, and what this planet actually needs is people working together.
In honor of Jane, of course. Photo by Satya deep on Unsplash
Jane also followed up her words with actions by creating Roots & Shoots, a youth action program that empowers young people to be the change in their communities. It spans more than 140 countries and has projects ranging from recycling drives and community gardens to tree-planting campaigns and animal rescues. Underpinning the youth movement, and Jane’s ethos in general, is that every action matters.
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you,” Jane often reminded her audiences. “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
I keep thinking about that quote, and like I wrote about last week, that each of us has influence even if we’re not an influencer. If we accept it as fact that we impact the world every single day, what kind of impact do we want to have? Some people are hellbent on impacting the world negatively by cutting healthcare access, deporting immigrants, or laying off workers so they can further line their own pockets.
In response to those people hellbent on negatively impacting the world, it feels like everyone and their mother is asking, “How are you working to stop them?” I have idiopathic hypersomnia and panic in crowds, so I’m not capable of being in the streets. I can’t join the protests, the marches, the trainings. And I have a loooot of feelings about that. But that doesn’t mean I’m not impacting the world around me. It doesn’t mean I’m not making a contribution.
I’m not a perfect person. I make mistakes. Sometimes I’m the villain in someone else’s story. But more often than not, the contribution I make is one of kindness, empathy, and authenticity. I may not speak in front of millions, but I’ll chat with a friend for an hour so she feels seen and heard. I may not join a protest, but I’ll show up for my friend’s film premiere. Even though those actions are small, they, too, make a difference. And they’re the sort of difference I want to make.
I dream of a world where we all embody the virtues Jane Goodall emphasized as much as we can. A world where we continue to have hope, show compassion, and see every being as worthy of love and respect. A world where we understand every day we make a difference, and we consciously choose what kind of difference we want to make.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.