quotes
The Messages That Reach Us
Since the yoga studio I like closed last year, I’ve been (kinda sorta) practicing with the Yoga Download site at home, which means I’m on their email list.
This past week I’ve felt anywhere from indecisive to stuck to thwarted on a lot of things–bathroom remodel plans, what new car to get and when, what my life is going to look like in 2, 5, or 10 years. So when I got the Yoga Download weekly email that started like this, it was pretty perfect:
All too often in yoga and in life, we become attached to our desired outcome…We become so focused on the end goal, that we lose our presence in the process. Instead, transformation becomes a mental concept; yet another thing that we overthink or project into the future, yet another item on a never-ending list of to-dos.
What if instead, we were to simply be present, trust the process, and detach from outcome? It may be deceptively simple, but putting this little mantra into action can be profoundly helpful. It allows us to notice the subtle fruits of our labor that may otherwise go unrecognized. Along the way, we may see that sometimes, it’s one step forward and two steps back, but that’s okay because we trust that we are on a general upward trend.
Sure, you could say that it’s no surprise I got a hippie thought in a yoga email. But I got it when I needed to see it most. There are messages for us everywhere, even in marketing emails.
Wednesday Hippie Thought
This is from The Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett. I haven’t read any Pratchett but maybe I need to start this this one:
The universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew.
Therefore there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them.
Therefore, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise.
The only appropriate state of the heart is joy.
The sky you see now, you have never seen before.
The perfect moment is now.
Be glad of it.
Arches!
We went to Moab for the weekend to celebrate my friend’s birthday, just like last year. The light and clouds weren’t quite as incredible this year, but that’s really splitting hairs in a place like this. It was a grand time in a grand place that continues to fascinate, as Ed Abbey puts it so well:
“Even after years of years of intimate contact and search this quality of strangeness in the desert remains undiminished. Transparent and intangible as sunlight, yet always and everywhere present, it lures a man on and on, from the red-walled canyons to the smoke-blue ranges beyond, in a futile but fascinating quest for the great, unimaginable treasure which the desert seems to promise.”
Today’s Thought
It’s been a while since we’ve had a hippie thought, so here’s something good to keep in mind from The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo:
Happy Birthday, Wallace Stegner
I have a soft spot for “writers of the West” because that’s what I want to be someday, too. Here he is talking about being just that:
“If there is such a thing as being conditioned by climate and geography, and I think there is, it is the West that has conditioned me. It has the forms and lights and colors that I respond to in nature and in art. If there is a western speech, I speak it; if there is a western character or personality, I am some variant of it; if there is a western culture in the small-c , anthropological sense, I have not escaped it. It has to have shaped me.”
Friday Unrelated Information
1. I finally watched The Grand Budapest Hotel last month and have been meaning to recommend it. The concierge character, M. Gustave, reminded me so much of my best friend trying to be gracious in his own store, giving us quotes like this:
“Rudeness is merely the expression of fear. People fear they won’t get what they want. The most dreadful and unattractive person only needs to be loved, and they will open up like a flower.
2. This article about the origins of the phrase “having it all” (title of Helen Gurley Brown’s 1982 memoir, early feminist demand, currently unpopular for being unrealistic) is fascinating. Short version: Brown never wanted that phrase to be the title in the first place.
I’d Like To Tell You About This Book
Prepare to be proselytized to, because I’m reading a book that is changing my life–and I think I will change yours, too. It’s called The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and based on the day, it’s the Amazon number-one best seller in either Home Organization or Self Help. It’s by Japanese organization expert Marie Kondo, and it presents her “KonMari” system for making and keeping your house clutter-free. In a nutshell, you’re supposed to sort through your items by category, touching each one and asking yourself, “Does this spark joy?” If it does, you keep it. If it doesn’t, you thank it for the joy it did bring you, and let it go.
I am still reading and won’t try any of this life-changing magic until the weekend, but the simple phrasing of “let it go” versus “get rid of it” totally got me–along with talking to inanimate objects, acknowledging the “energy” in objects and houses, and the admonishment to let your own heart be your guide.
Really, it’s organizing for hippies. And here are some passages that have really struck me so far:
Bluebird Day
Here’s more John Muir giving his hippie opinion to accompany some Sunday hike (excuse me, saunter) photos:
[When asked about the word “hike”:] I don’t like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains — not hike! Do you know the origin of that word saunter? It’s a beautiful word. Away back in the middle ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, ‘A la sainte terre,’ ‘To the Holy Land.’ And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not ‘hike’ through them.