Tag: self worth

Light child, lightly (2)

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bird-in-hand-kiss

I heard a bird congratulating itself
all day for being a jay.
Nobody cared. But it was glad
all over again, and said so, again

~ William Stafford, “News Every Day” from Passwords

 

Notes:

  • Poem: Thank you Karl @ Mindfulbalance.
  • Photo: wsj.com – Youssef Badawi – A bird seller getting close to the merchandise at al-Shaalan market in Damascus, Syria.
  • 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.”

Is this good enough?

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Ryan-Holiday

[…] Think about what you put on Instagram, on Twitter, on a blog, on Facebook. These are great media but it’s clear they select for a very specific type of content. It’s got to be bite sized. It’s got to look good. It has to be spreadable. It has to compete with all the other content out there from professionals, from pretty girls, from snarky a**holes. Oh, and it has to generate a certain number of public responses or you look like a loser. In a sense, these tools that were intended to help us share our realities ironically has turned into a sort of unpaid performance art. I know that you sense this too. That moment of hesitation before you post something.

Is this good enough?  […]

~ Ryan Holiday

Don’t miss Ryan Holiday’s entire post and the punch line at: The Performance Bias: Life is Not a Movie, Life is Not a Novel

Notes:

Riding Metro North. Giving Up the Ghost.

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Takashi-Kawashima-photography-block

Hump Day. Hump it was.

It’s the 9:06 pm train from Grand Central. A 15-hour day and it wasn’t over.

I sit with other weary commuters heading home. The train is silent.

I can’t get comfortable. I shift left, and then right and then lean against the window. I give up. I need to be horizontal, in my bed.

It’s Haunting. A Ghost. It’s Hilary Mantel’s Giving Up the Ghost:

The faintest movement, a ripple, a disturbance of the air. I can sense a spiral, a lazy buzzing swirl, like flies; but it is not flies. There is nothing to see. There is nothing to smell. There is nothing to hear. But it is motion, its insolent shift, makes my stomach heave. I can sense— at the periphery, the limit of all my senses— the dimensions of the creature. It is as high as a child of two. Its depth is a foot, fifteen inches. The air stirs around it, invisibly. I am cold, and rinsed by nausea. I cannot move. I am shaking. . . . This is the beginning of shame.

You are tired. You know that’s it.  Let it go Man. Continue reading “Riding Metro North. Giving Up the Ghost.” →

Flying S-SW. 2,000,000 and counting.

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full-moon-plane-fly

38,000 feet above Earth.
This flight is a milestone: 2,000,000 miles on American Airlines.
Congratulations. You’ve achieve lifetime Platinum status on AA.
Another goal chased and passed.
A sigh. And then quickly comes the ‘so what.’

The mind burrows back.

It was the Harvest Moon as we touched down in Warsaw.

It was early morning in our approach: “Sweet blueberry or strawberry yogurt Sir?” Are all the women this beautiful in Singapore?

It was the security lines at Heathrow post-9-11, waiting for the red-eye back to New York. The tense shuffling of feet.

It was the soft flowing arid landscape of Athens.  Hogan whispering: “Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still they say. Watch and listen.” Ancient sacred grounds stirring the depths of the soul. Greek Gods. Feel their presence.

But, there’s interference in my rooting back.
Back never holds me for long.
Back like Jack. Kerouac that is. “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”

It’s one image that flares.
And won’t let go. Continue reading “Flying S-SW. 2,000,000 and counting.” →

Where are the A+s? Who really knows?

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ladder-climb-down-up

My generation was more like the Un-self-esteem movement. The Self-Disesteem Movement. We were constantly being told what bums and losers we were. Be a man! Suck it up! What’s wrong with you? Those were the child-rearing mantras that our parents, teachers, and coaches—the Greatest Generation—dished out to us. If you brought home a report card with straight A’s, the only question was, “Where are the A+s?”

[…]

Whose opinion counts most in the end?

Who’s the one person we can’t fool?

Who really knows how deep we dug or how true we played it?

~ Steven Pressfield, Giving Ourselves Some Props

Notes: Photo – Anja Matko, Self-Portrait, “Afraid of Falling” (via Mennyfox55)