Take patience

My flight before New Year’s was delayed, communication about what was happening was unclear, and I was frustrated. I just wanted to be there.

“Take patience,” my boyfriend said to me. Ever sweet, knowing the exact right thing to say, and also a non-native English speaker. I loved this perfect language mistake, because not only did it make me smile, it made me appreciate patience more.

I love the idea of patience as something I can pick up, choose, put on, swallow like a glass of water.

Here—take patience.

"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

Who am i without this? / Byron Katie's Four Questions

Author Byron Katie developing something called Four Liberating Questions, a brief self-inquiry process that is as simple as it is profound. It’s also called “The Work,” and I’ve found it to be an incredibly effective method to move beyond thought traps, controlling thoughts and negative thoughts. The background:

I discovered that when I believed my thoughts I suffered, but when I didn’t believe them I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always. And I invite you not to believe me. I invite you to test it for yourself.

– Byron Katie

And now for The Questions. It goes like this:

1. Is it true?

2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

3. How do you react when you believe that thought?

4. Who would you be without the thought?

When I’ve shared it with others, they’ve found it as powerful and effective as I have. At this point, I find myself moving through the questions almost automatically, often in my head. When I feel particularly stuck, however, and especially when I first began using them, I would journal out the questions and my responses.

I’ve made it a bit of my own by asking myself the question, “Who am I without this?” when I find myself particularly attached to an idea, thought or identity. It’s sometimes scary to answer, but on the other side of all those feelings, it’s always liberating.

See Byron Katie’s page for more, including the invitation on the home page: “Meet your Internal Wisdom. The Work is meditation. It is a method of inquiry born directly out of Byron Katie’s experience. This practice allows you to access the wisdom that always exists within you.”

That's a tomorrow solution

Rather than saying “that’s a problem for tomorrow,” or “that’s a tomorrow problem,” I’ve started instead to say, “that’s a solution for tomorrow,” or, “that’s a tomorrow solution,” and it’s such as silly and simple change-up, that it always makes me smile.

And like my manicurist in San Juan said after noticing how anxiousness had affected my nails, lo que no se resuelve hoy, se resuelve mañana. Or, what isn’t solved today, is solved tomorrow.”

I’ve also heard this mental trick of, when being faced with a problem solution opportunity, saying “I’m so grateful this has already been resolved,” (and saying it with your chest, or saying it with heart! So it’s felt.) Then you get to wait for it to unfold, now in a more easeful place of knowing—feeling—that it will happen. It’s something of a fun little future trust fall.

Also, a reminder to self that the simplest solution is is usually the best solution.

Everything I've ever wanted

Today, a friend messaged me that she had the thought, the realization, that she has everything she’s ever wanted. It’s maybe not been in the moment she thought it would be, or the manner she expected. Still, she’s gotten it, and she still has it. Everything she’s ever wanted.

It’s a thought I’ve had before, and one I was meant to hear again, right then. A reoriented perspective on what is here right now, and a reminder. Reminders to release the timeline, release the constraints, and let be as big and beautiful as it is. Everything I’ve ever wanted. That, and more.

She ended it, too, with “How lucky am I,” and I loved reading it as a statement. How lucky is she, and how lucky am I, and how important that we see that—that we are lucky, and also that we choose to see—that we have everything we’ve ever wanted.

"There is no best in music"

Harry Styles was just awarded Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, and I was disappointed. I wanted Bad Bunny, “Benito,” to win; I wanted it to be the “we’ve made it” moment of Latin music that I feel like it deserves to be, that the impact Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” album has had on me and so many others around the world, an impact shown in numbers, in streams, and felt deep and in the heart, in the way I know so many people feel about musicians and music they love. It’s just that it was this album; it was this moment.

In Styles’ acceptance speech (and I do adore and appreciate him as an artist, I will say!) he said, “We all know there is no best in music.” And that is so beautiful, so important to note, and so true. All art that is meaningful, beautiful, created out of love, in passion, out of necessity, for contribution, as a gift. I texted it to a friend, and she responded, “No favorites.” Because I’ve had this thing for some time now of saying I don’t believe in a “favorite,” a “best”; when everything fulfills, fills and inspires me in such different and special ways. I’ll often get asked what my “favorite” travel destination is/was when people find out I was a travel journalist. How to answer that? There are places I’ve met in different states and ways; places that have met me, suprised me, challenged me, changed me. So much of it was about who I was at that moment, too.

There is no best (a supremacist concept), and I choose not to play favorites. We do our best, which is always changing, to be our best, which is always changing, in every moment. I choose not to play favorites, and instead appreciate each moment for what it gives, for what it is.

Dedicated to Bad Bunny and “Un Verano Sin Ti,” my Album of the Year

The most relevant response

I had the idea that tonight I was going to write here something related to a postcard a friend sent me from Japan, something I’ve had written in my head for a while. That, and maybe watch the new Love Island UK season premiere. Then, I got back from yoga, had dinner and have had a heavy headache since. I don’t get headaches often at all anymore, which is nice. (I think since I started meditating—and overall developed more practices and space to listen and respond to my body and its signals in a more supportive way.) It also feels like a lot, I think because I’m no longer used to it. I’m reminding myself I just got back from traveling, was at altitude and in freezing temperatures skiing in Colorado, and looking at a screen most of the day, so my body and brain are probably responding to all that.

In the Vedic meditation community we talk a lot about “relevant responses,” which I think requires 1) present moment awareness and 2) the ability, and choice, to align, which may mean surrendering an expectation or prior idea. And in any event, meaning this event, it didn’t feel right to force write what feels like a special story post, because that’s something I want to enjoy. It did feel right to take an ibuprofen, which I also don’t do often, and also to write this post on relevance. And somehow writing it has not worsened my headache, and actually felt good.

Everything has the meaning we give it

Happy New Year! Today, on a milestone on this one timeline we’ve created to track and measure our lives and other things, I find myself reminding myself that this day is like any other days, in that it can be, and is, whatever we want it to be. January 1, a new year, a Sunday, a day. Today, like all things, anything, everything in life, has the meaning we give it.

Happy New Year, all the same! And all the different.