I am feeling the need
To instruct myself over and over in joy
As the days of the pandemic unfold and we see no end in sight my mood has taken a downturn. I am angry with my husband Jon for no reason. And I feel sad and confined and bored. It feels as if I am running an endless marathon in an unfamiliar landscape.
In my dreams last night I was in public places eating food samples I should not be eating (who knows who might have breathed on them!) and people were standing far too close for our current social distancing guidelines and would not give me space no matter how I tried to escape. I could not do the things I wanted to do because “it was too dangerous” and the world was chaotic and cacophonous.
It was not a restful night.
There is a mindless part of me that is ordering the sad scared part to buck up and stop whining. And a self-destructive part that wants to go out and catch the damn virus just to have it over with.
Listening to my mindful self
And then there is my somewhat new, kind, mindful, compassionate self who murmurs softly in my ear, “Let yourself feel what you feel. Cry if you need to. Remember to look at yourself in the mirror and say ‘Good morning Marilyn, I love you.’ Joy is present even in these hard times. Look for the beauty. Ask for extra hugs from Jon. Reach out to a friend on the phone. Send a pretty card to someone just to say, ‘I’m thinking of you.’ Breathe and meditate, even if you don’t feel like doing it (especially if you don’t feel like doing it). Make your joy a light for others.
Purpose is the positive energetic undercurrent of a life well lived, fuel for the fire within you that asks not just “how can I help?” but, more deliberately, “how can my joy be a light?” — Infinite Purpose by Liv Lane and Lori Portia
How can my joy be a light?
I am asking myself, “How can my joy be a light” every day. What I know is that being honest about what I’m feeling, writing, noticing beauty, being self–compassionate, making photographs, and sharing photographs bring me joy and lighten my days.
Mindful
Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
–Mary Oliver, Mindful,
in Why I Wake Early
May you walk in beauty.
May you instruct yourself over and over in joy.
Note: the photos in today’s post are from 2010 and 2011, some of my oldest photos. I have begun going through my old photo catalogs and am finding delight in some of the images there.
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