"Joy is not to be made a crumb"

I’ve lately been finding, feeling joy in sweet, quotidian, small (“small”) moments. Waking in a comfortable bed. Holding the littlest homegrown strawberry in my hand. Seeing a heavenly summer sunset crack open the sky over Bern, Switzerland. Appreciating a whole tour group in Bruges admire how my dad, the self-made history buff, got every answer the guide posed on our tour, correct, and then some. (Beer was invented in Mesopotamia! Cacao comes from the Aztecs, and did you know they had no sugar, instead using cinnamon to sweeten it?)

It’s been in this time of small joys that a friend shared this perfect Mary Oliver poem, “Don’t Hesitate,” below. Don’t hesitate. Give in to joy.

“Don’t Hesitate” by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate.

Give in to it.

There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be.

We are not wise, and not very often kind.

And much can never be redeemed.

Still, life has some possibility left.

Perhaps this is its way of fighting back,

that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world.

It could be anything,

but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins.

Anyway, that’s often the case.

Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty.

Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Related thoughts I’ve shared:

Joy is a Practicality

The Little Things are the Big Things

Fill it with nothing

The first month to month, and a half of my current leave from work has been a lot of… what do I do now?! The everyday, distractions, timelines and habits, like those associated with a corporate workday have been peeled off, and while it feels liberating and I feel lucky, it’s also a bit confronting. Who am I without this? is sometimes not exciting, or easy, to answer.

While staying solo for a week in Madrid, a city, that I love to even more than I remembered, I talked with a friend, who had had a similar experience, some years prior, taking a few months for herself. She sent me a voice note saying, it is interesting; interesting to see what occupies your mind, and your time, when it’s not that thing, or those prior things. It then becomes an analysis of, what is there? And then a progression to, what do I want? To be filling my mind and my time?

I launched into strategizing and planning and future goalsetting like I would with work, or some thing of the like. And then I stopped myself. Because I think what it’s meant to be, right now, is nothing. Fill it with nothing and let it be. Fill it with nothing, and just see.

what is for certain

I especially liked the “What’s the secret?” question because yesterday when I was wandering around Stockholm, I had the thought, “What’s for certain?” come to mind. It may be because I’d recently seen someone answer the Hinge dating app prompt “I am certain that” by saying, “I will die.” (Swedish humor.) Interestingly, I’ve encountered more professed atheists here on this trip (also mostly via dating apps) than probably my whole prior life. (Is this a European thing?)

anyway, I was thinking about that question and how there’s actually not much I can, or want to, answer about that right now, and how that’s pretty freeing. Because once we have that defined, we’re open to whatever else there is, and whatever else could be, I believe.

What’s for certain?

What’s the secret?

Someone on a dating app just started the conversation with me by asking, “What’s the secret?”

“That life is to be enjoyed.

“That we’re all a bunch of nerds.

“That no one has any idea what they’re doing. (And that’s a beautiful thing.)” Was my response.

What’s the secret?

There are No wrong turns

Last month I was in Greece on a “hunnies’ moon,” which is a term and concept invented by my newlywed friends for a post-wedding trip they organized with a group of the wedding guests.

We were walking in Mykonos, finding our way up whitewashed, windy streets to 180 Sunset Bar on our last night. Maps would say to take one little road up, and they were all so close in proximity that we would take another one. When someone asked if we’d taken the right path, I said: “There are no wrong turns in Greece!” I said to the group, which is something I’d started to say earlier in the trip when we’d find ourselves slightly off the recommended path but somewhere, of course, wonderful.

This time, one of them turned around and added, “Only extra rights.” Yes, yes; exactly.

There are no wrong, turns; only extra rights.

Life is lived in the transitions

I spent a lot of my life, as I think many of us are trying to do and it’s driving society, Heather focused on what’s next. The Next Thing. When this happens, things will, I will, life will, be different. Better. Changed.

That’s been me for a lot of it. A life of staccato, of delayed, and even denied, appreciation of the present, the current reality, in all its fullness and truth. Instead, reaching forever for a future state.

in one yoga class in New York City, I remember looking to the teacher or a teacher, taking the class near the front, whatever it was, and seeing how beautifully this person transition from one pose to another. I was so focused on hitting the next one I saw it and sell it I thought about, and felt very little into, how I was getting there I decided to bring more attention to it, more intention, and ideally some grace. I remembered that the other day when I moved into a new position in a class here in Bordeaux, and it felt so good. I felt so in it.

Travel is a state of transition, really, too. I remind myself of that as I board a train, pack for the airport, and sit in wherever I’ve been staying for the last month in Europe. I’m here now in Bordeaux, on a leave from work, and thinking about how in some way, all ways, everything is a transition. I’m learning French in a fun little hopscotch way—reading signs, using a translator, listening to a podcast, asking friends—and I realized how in French many words flow one into another in speaking, and how beautiful it sounds. The stops are indiscernible, the transitions the speech. (“Nous allons,” “We go,” is said like “Nouzallon.”)

Nous/allons, living life in the transitions.

Stir the air

I arrived to my Airbnb in Bordeaux yesterday, which is in the historic part of the city right by the theater, where I heard the choir practicing this afternoon and my jaw dropped in awe.

My host informed me that my place is without air conditioning; installation is not allowed in the historic part of the city. Still, the stone building keeps cool, and she left me instructions for how to keep it temperate during the day, and then refresh it at night. “At night, open everything and stir the air with the fan.”

So, I am here, back at home before going out to a cafe to write a bit more, after stopping on a quiet, tree-lined plaza, (“place” in French) on my slow way home after a high-energy spin class and a walk to an outdoor market, the fan gently blowing. I am stirring the air, and then staying still. Stirring, and stillness.

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For Sam, who I am so happy to be visiting here in Bordeaux!

Start where you are

I haven’t written in a while—all of the month of April, I now see—and here we are. I don’t wish I had done it, or regret not doing it, or anything. It just is what it is; it was what it was. And that makes it right.

I got quite sick during that time, the sickest I’ve ever been, at the end of which one friend reflected back to that I sounded so “raw,” that the whole experience sounded so raw. It was, in so many ways. And I am so grateful for my health, so grateful to be better. I also had my family in town for a week after that, which did wonders for my recovery and was so nice. Really so nice. It was the first time in a long time we were all able to be somewhere together (their lovely Airbnb) for a stretch of time and just enjoy each other’s company and being together. I miss having them here. And I am so grateful they were able to come. I also went to Coachella, and Napa, and said goodbye to my long-time manager at work and started on a new team and am preparing for a big move (it’s all already happening, as they say, as I’d say, as I remind myself) and a departure, a leave, from things as I know them right now. I am excited, it feels right, and it is all still a process. A process that sometimes calls for stillness, and other times calls for action, like selling and giving away almost everything I own: a literal practice in letting go.

I wanted to write here tonight and I didn’t know what to write, even with all the drafts saved here, even with all the notes in my phone like, “Live the width of your life,” which Bozoma Saint John shared in a talk at Google for International Women’s Day. Start where you are, came the quiet reminder. Yes, that. Start where you are, and right now, I am right here. Writing this, and letting it be it.