After we die, we weigh twenty-one grams less. This is the weight of wakefulness, light as seven hummingbirds. Who then are these quivering angels? Certainly, care is one, and wonder is another, and our irrepressible want to be in the light, and our will to live. Then there’s our need to hold and be held…If you put what matters on a scale, it would weigh less than seven feathers and yet it would somehow balance the heaviness that we carry in our heart.

~ Mark Nepo, from “Quivering Angels” in Things That Join the Sea and the Sky: Field Notes on Living

Notes:

• Photo: Ramona Pioneer Girl with Hummingbird
• 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.”