Tag: heal

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Live & Learn16 Comments

There was a time when I believed that the two most powerful sentences in the English language were “I love you” and “I’m sorry.” I now know that those words can wound, deeply, when they’re contradicted by our actions. “I’m sorry” can even insult our intelligence if regret never leads to repentance. […]

That’s what “The Bear” is really about: How do we live together when someone always seems to be going too far? The answer we ultimately get is that we can’t. We can’t sustain a community when the pain grows too great. […]

In Season 3, we can clearly see the damage Carmy has done. He has made something great, but each person in the restaurant — each person in his family — is still under terrible strain. Something has to give.

No, more precisely, someone has to give, and that someone is Carmy.

This terrible tension and pain can make “The Bear” difficult to watch. Relationships are splintering across America. It’s hard enough to live in a community — we are all inherently flawed, after all. Normal human failings create persistent frictions, and unless we learn to deal with and ameliorate that friction, even the best of friendships can sometimes fade.

But we’re living through something else, a furious anger in which it seems people actually want to end friendships, where they want to inflict pain with their words. It’s one way to demonstrate your commitment, your great and high ideological or religious or political calling. The cause demands it, and you serve the cause. […]

I’m such a fallen person that when I saw that scene, I admit that my first thought was of the people who needed to repent to me. But thankfully that moment passed. Instead, I came to feel a profound sense of conviction. I asked myself, “Who have I harmed?” and — more important — “How can I change?”

At a time of extraordinary fury, we all live in a degree of pain. We all live with regrets. But hope can come from unexpected places — and perhaps a show that features scallops, pastries and Chicago beef can also teach us that only repentance can heal our broken hearts.

— David French, The Raw Power of Repentance (NY Times, July 27, 2025)

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Live & Learn12 Comments

It seems selfish to talk about such a mundane breaking apart in a world where real wreckage lies scattered everywhere. Instead, I try to carry the sadness around quietly, so as not to take up too much air with it, to leave space for the far more significant sadnesses of others. How do we appropriately mourn the passage of time when it’s passing beautifully, safely, but not for everyone? And how do we honor milestones that happen while we aren’t looking? The first toddling steps, taken at home with the sitter while we’re at work, or the first baby tooth, lost at preschool. The last time we saw someone, not knowing it was the last. All I know to do is acknowledge the fortune of having milestones to celebrate at all. I can celebrate people whose accomplishments mark time in my own life. I can accept that firsts and lasts are both glorious and breathtakingly sad, especially when they sneak up on us. I can watch and listen for losses I can do something about, and then I can stand by someone’s side, make a phone call, give my time, cast a vote—anything I can do, as often as possible—to try to make sure fewer parents suffer the unthinkable, that more people will bear only the most ordinary losses. And I can try to contain my emotions when they hit me like a wave in public, the way they did that late-summer afternoon while shopping for peaches. If you happen to catch me moping while gazing upon my firstborn’s favorite food, know that I’m pulling myself together. Really, I am. I’ve just slipped for a second into my own tiny, self-indulgent grief. And if you, too, are thinking, I thought I had more time, for any reason—a loss large or small or so eclipsed by refracted rays of joy that you’re ashamed to call it a loss at all—come stand quietly by the fruit with me. We don’t even have to talk, unless… well, would you mind telling me to turn my oven off? It’s so easy to miss the moment when things begin to burn.

— Mary Laura Philpott, Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives (Atria Books, April 12, 2022)

Notes:

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

Live & Learn11 Comments

Freud, one of the grand masters of narrative, knew that the past is not fixed in the way that linear time suggests. We can return. We can pick up what we dropped. We can mend what others broke.

– Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (Grove Press, March 6, 2012) 

Portrait: CCCB

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn17 Comments

Whispering “yes” instead of screaming no…

Try it. If you’ve tried it before, try it again…

and soften into it…

No need for fancy formulas or prescribed affirmations.

No goal.

Just be.

Right here…

One breath in front of the other.

~ Mirabai Starr, Softening into the Pain

Notes:

  • Photo: Surrender by Anne-Martine Parent. Quote: Thank you Make Believe Boutique
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”

Lightly Child, Lightly.

Live & Learn12 Comments

Days that say yes,

like lights which buzz,

like sacred rain.

~ Olga Orozco, from “The Game is Up” (Les Jeux Sont Faits) tr. by Elaine Stirling in “Engravings Torn from Insomnia: Selected Poems”

 

Notes:

  • Photo: Rain Room. Quote: Liquid Light and Running Trees
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”