The greatest price we pay is in time.
listen well —
and let the silence reign.
Listen well — and let the silence rain.
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to simply listen. It may not feel like it does any good. It may feel as though things just go around in circles… but there is some comfort, for the speaker, in being listened to — and even more comfort in them feeling they are heard.
I was given the gift of this quote, years ago, by my father. He had it drawn, in black ink, as a handmade piece of calligraphy. Dad then framed it for me and it has hung, on my wall for years, as a reminder of what Dad must have felt was the best way he could say these things to me.
These words are by the great Canadian novelist Margaret Laurence.
“If this were indeed my Final Hour, these would be my words to you. I would not claim to pass on any secret of life for there is none, or any wisdom except the passionate plea of caring. Try to feel, in your heart’s core, the reality of others. This is the most painful thing in the world, probably, and the most necessary. In times of personal adversity, know that you are not alone. Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable as are all of your fellow humans everywhere in the world. Know that your commitment is above all to life itself.”
I sew one day to the next.
There is no separation really. One day bleeds into night — and even that I live through, in a subterranean dream space, from which I emerge — always grateful to sew more.
time — our scarcest resource
You can’t earn more. You can’t not spend it. You can’t get it back once it’s gone. It goes in one direction.
Things happen once.
the choices we make
day after day — week after week — year after year… I don’t know how to stay my “best self” if I let go of the spine I’ve created for myself here. Really just such a hard thing to navigate.
to be listened to
and heard… This is no small thing. It’s what we long for — from when we are very small children. My clarity of purpose is crystalizing.
what I used to do;
— I used to sheepishly assume that other people’s opinions were more valid, or more important, than my own.
— I used to doubt my self-worth based on hearing “mostly nothing” in response to my work.
— I used to question “my voice”, as a songwriter, when that internal voice was the one I most needed to listen to — the one I most needed to trust.
No more.
I microblog therefor I am.
My thoughts are with the people of Ukraine today. I can’t imagine being at that bleeding edge — on the heals of the global crisis we’ve all endured.
Words fail me. Still, I put this few together as a small cry — that the war will be reduced to a battle — and that it will spell the “beginning of the end” for the perpetrator.
deep linear focus
My ability to focus has been eroding. Strangely, with all the “connectivity” promised through technology, sometimes, my thoughts are reduced to evaporating cognitive “sound-bites” that disappear as quickly as they occur to me — as soon as they are uttered — in my brain.
I tell myself; there is value in an internal echo-chamber. There is value in repetition. No two moments are the same. The challenge is to seek out things worth repeating — things worth internalizing — things worth saying.
I put the phone on airplane mode. I seek deep linear focus.
Little by little, I trust the moment.
When it comes from that place, I trust the utterance.
watersheds
Water collects, builds higher and higher — drop by drop. It overflows suddenly and drains out in a new, unforeseen direction. Until it breaks, we don’t know where it will go. Trust; it will break.