Maybe relationships don't just happen among humans. Maybe love and connection and bonding are experiences bigger than our Homo sapiens egos have often times imagined. Share a story about a non-ape being in your life who you love.
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Even the slightest gesture can have a big impact on our mood and on the moods of others we encounter through the day. A quiet grace like holding the door for the next person, a shared glance on the subway with a calm warmth in the eyes, a tear not choked back, bravely, simply open — these moments can all be bits of magic in the swirl of life. What's something perhaps small yet mighty that you've done this week for yourself or for others?  All over the world, intergenerational trauma is a part of how people are people. And we react and respond to the genes, family, culture, and history that shape us in a lot of different ways at different times in our lives. What's something about your experience today that may relate to the generation that came before you?  Perhaps there is a way of being more or less honest with ourselves and with others about what we do and do not know. Sometimes we're just moving too fast to parse the truth before our thoughts and mouths start moving and we take actions we might not have if we'd been clearer on what we did and did not know. And maybe we have to take action at some point. And maybe the very notion of knowing is itself already both clear and unclear in every moment, and there are lines we must draw around what we perceive as true while we simultaneously know those lines can be arbitrary. What helps you parse what you do and do not know?  Broadly, being informed can be an important aspect of self-care and collective care. Knowing when to call an advice nurse or visit the hospital, getting updates on community or neighborhood events and concerns, and being aware of global issues like our planet's collapsing climate. Yet, we may sometimes not be informed or we may not be able to consume as much information as is available to us, and at times we may actually need to take breaks from information, turning off our computers and devices, being alone, and getting a good night's sleep. Finding the right balance for how much information we take in can be tricky. What's one way that you modulate getting enough and not too much information?  To witness awakening and transformation in someone else can be refreshing, emotionally moving, and personally healing. Over time, when we demonstrate increasing skillfulness with each other it can repair old hurts and release us from the grip of certain thoughts and life trajectories that are not who we are. Maybe especially where someone previously, in their own hurt and numbness, showed more disdain, enmity, resentment, and clenching, can now show us more loving kindness, compassion, compersion, and equanimity, we can accept this palpable invitation back into a loop of opening, softening, and strengthening our hearts together. What is an act of the divine that you have witnessed in another this week?  Learning and growing in a supportive community can be one of life's greatest joys and most potent tools for change. Perhaps community is so important because our strivings to get fully present in and with life may not in fact be possible without also expressing and experiencing our awakenings in our relationships with self and with others. And so, we maybe can't ever really cultivate happiness and wellness without a relational acknowledgment and practice. What is one way you are feeling alive and expressed in connection and community right now?  Throughout life, we can get help in a lot of different ways. And we maybe need a lot of different kinds of supports, from medical doctors to dentists to massage therapists, talk therapy, acupuncture, and psychiatry, meditation sanghas, exercise groups, and communing with plants and animals and the stars and the earth — and so much more. We maybe need to keep reminding ourselves and supporting each other to remember that our health and wellness is likely not be derived from one source, but from a fluctuating medley of supports. And we can still take time to be with our gratitude for places where and ways that our hearts are particularly well met. What's a health and wellness practice, or several, that are bringing you to life right now?  In relationships we can do a lot to enhance how we are relating just by spending time on our relationship with ourselves, learning about ourselves, and practicing and growing new ways of being. At the same time, we may have some enduring feelings and places where we get activated in relationship with others. In these moments, we may need to call on the capacity of the human brain and mind to hold ourselves and others with a gentler-mannered witness, a witness that has compassion for the parts that remain painful and hard. What's one thing your inner witness tells you with compassion?  Learning and witnessing ourselves as learners can be exciting, confusing, painful, and many, many more feelings and experiences as well. Yet, we may be learning our whole lives, and this may be a truth that never changes, as much as everything else is changing. What is something you're learning about love this season?  |
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