Love this: “This year I’m going to get on board with enjoying being ordinary. I’m going to enjoy writing the ordinary sort of essays that Satya writes, like this one.” Your Aiko photo is adorable, and I mean this is a good way, made me think of Falcor from the Neverending Story!
Good morning and Happy New Year! Satya, thank you so much for your kind, honest and thought inspiring words. I have been seaching for my word of the year. A long and evolving list. I choose Enough, Humble, Connection, Self discipline, Kindness, and Support, all good but not rich enough. I finally found the right one...SERVICE.🙏💞
It's the perfect essay for me, too! I think most of us pick up our pens and burden the first words with great expectations. I do, anyhow. In my composition class, we start the year with freewrites, which come with "permission to write the worst junk in the world." At the end of the year, students thank me for this practice more than anything else. But of course writing isn't your point (nor is it the point with freewriting -- e.g., Natalie Goldberg). Happy new year!
I love that - like Lamott's shitty first drafts. And yes, writing as metaphor for everything else... lovely to be connected again Bryce - Happy New Year!!
"Five minutes of each day of January, imagining that I am loveable just as I am.
Everything stopped. Knowing that I was already enough whooshed through me. Tears sprung to my eyes. It was almost too much to bear. The knowing skittered away again, leaving me with the echo of a smile."
These words, your words, reading them aloud quietly to myself, enjoying them as I always do, until suddenly, literally, everything did stop, and I remembered how amazed I once was to discover that it was possible to hold myself tenderly in my own arms, one hand on my belly, the other on my heart, and how comforted and deeply loved I felt. The tears, the weeping followed on the dawning realisation that I was enough, that I had always been enough. I just didn't know it. Your Perfect Essay today is a beautiful reminder of the perfection to be found everywhere and here too, in the depths of our hearts.
(I always read everything aloud to myself these days. It is as if I cannot quite understand what they mean, each on to their own, before pulling the strands of their uniqueness together until I finally get how they are knitted together, how they hold the sense of themselves in unison with one another.
What a great start to the year! My daily mantra, at the end of meditation, finishes with "Find the courage to breathe in the suffering of the world; allow peace and healing to breathe out through you in return" 💕
Love this: “This year I’m going to get on board with enjoying being ordinary. I’m going to enjoy writing the ordinary sort of essays that Satya writes, like this one.” Your Aiko photo is adorable, and I mean this is a good way, made me think of Falcor from the Neverending Story!
Hehe - I think you might be talking about Ralph - the one with the underbite... the comparison has been made before! Thanks for being here Amy.
Good morning and Happy New Year! Satya, thank you so much for your kind, honest and thought inspiring words. I have been seaching for my word of the year. A long and evolving list. I choose Enough, Humble, Connection, Self discipline, Kindness, and Support, all good but not rich enough. I finally found the right one...SERVICE.🙏💞
Perfect!
Your ordinary you is quite extraordinary, in my humble opinion. Happy New Year, Satya!
Aw. Sending love!
It's the perfect essay for me, too! I think most of us pick up our pens and burden the first words with great expectations. I do, anyhow. In my composition class, we start the year with freewrites, which come with "permission to write the worst junk in the world." At the end of the year, students thank me for this practice more than anything else. But of course writing isn't your point (nor is it the point with freewriting -- e.g., Natalie Goldberg). Happy new year!
I love that - like Lamott's shitty first drafts. And yes, writing as metaphor for everything else... lovely to be connected again Bryce - Happy New Year!!
Perfect essay for me and for today.
hugs x
Happy new year, Satya. I think this is one of the most perfect things I’ve ever read 👏❤️
Aw shucks. Happy New Year Amanda - glad you're here doing what you do 😊
Happy new year to you and Aiko!
Aiko sends her love 🐶💚
Love this, and it lands for me, just like the poem, with perfect timing. Happy new year! 🙏
Thanks Rob! You too!
"Five minutes of each day of January, imagining that I am loveable just as I am.
Everything stopped. Knowing that I was already enough whooshed through me. Tears sprung to my eyes. It was almost too much to bear. The knowing skittered away again, leaving me with the echo of a smile."
These words, your words, reading them aloud quietly to myself, enjoying them as I always do, until suddenly, literally, everything did stop, and I remembered how amazed I once was to discover that it was possible to hold myself tenderly in my own arms, one hand on my belly, the other on my heart, and how comforted and deeply loved I felt. The tears, the weeping followed on the dawning realisation that I was enough, that I had always been enough. I just didn't know it. Your Perfect Essay today is a beautiful reminder of the perfection to be found everywhere and here too, in the depths of our hearts.
(I always read everything aloud to myself these days. It is as if I cannot quite understand what they mean, each on to their own, before pulling the strands of their uniqueness together until I finally get how they are knitted together, how they hold the sense of themselves in unison with one another.
Ah, Edith, I was moved by your sharing.
What a beautiful way of honouring words - speaking them.
Love from here!
What a great start to the year! My daily mantra, at the end of meditation, finishes with "Find the courage to breathe in the suffering of the world; allow peace and healing to breathe out through you in return" 💕
Love this. Happy New Year Janey!
I love the fact that it acknowledges that it takes real courage to 'breathe in the suffering of the world'