WHEN THE GOING GETS tough, it’s a natural instinct to ‘turtle’. Pull in your flippers, tuck in your tail and head, and curl up until the badness is past. It’s the same instinct that made you hide under the covers when you were a kid and you heard a noise in the night (everyone knows blankets are impervious to monsters). It’s the one that has us reaching for our dressing-gown and the remote when we’ve been pummelled by the daily storms of life.
When the world is full of sharp edges and pointy things, I retreat to a place that feels soft and safe. I dive under the covers the way my anxious cat does when she hears a stranger at the door. But that’s only half the purpose of my mental cocoon.
My comfort zone is a clear space in the thicket of chaos. And that clear space is where we do the work. We catch our breath. We take inventory. And yes, we might also catch up on our reading and grab a few episodes of our favourite show. Mainly, though, it’s our chance to be still, to let the swirling confusion settle so that we can see through the murk.
But the best thing about my comfort zone is that it’s portable. It’s my mobile charging station. It’s not a place to run away from the world. It’s where we go to find our balance.
NANEA HOFFMAN – SWEATPANTS & COFFEE
THE CHALLENGE
Don’t
miss
out
on
something
that
could
be
GREAT
just
because
it
could
also
be
DIFFICULT …
YOUR TIME WILL COME
Don’t compare your life to others. There’s no comparison between the sun and the moon. They each shine when it’s their time.
GO-GO-GO!
Wherever you go –
BE BRAVE.
To whomever you meet –
BE KIND.
With whatever you have –
DO GOOD.
CURLY GIRL
GOTTA PULL IT TOGETHER
How much more can you take? I’m asking a serious question. How much more of the insanity can you take before you start to notice that you in fact are going crazy?
For some of you, it’s a good kind of crazy:
- Like you’ve finally quit that job that was making you miserable.
- You’ve dropped those ‘friends’ who weren’t really your friends and who didn’t share your values or the kind of world you wanted to live in.
- You’ve finally found a way to move to someplace else.
- You bought a used cello and have learned to play it – in your 70s!
- You’ve finally stopped exercising – and now you go for a walk every day just for the fun and beauty of it!
People think you’ve gone crazy, but you’re not. You’re just living in your world, the world you always hoped to live in, and it makes others very uncomfortable to see you writing poems instead of answering texts.
Have we all just sorta, somewhat, lost it? Are we all doing our best to hide the fact that each of us maybe slipped into a tiny funk hole two years ago, and since then we have ever so incrementally gotten more down, more alone, more exhausted, more despairing, more mad-as-a-hatter?
Is the time in which we live pushing us personally to the brink where, on certain days, we find ourselves clinging to the side of a cliff – whether it’s the cliff of Covid, the cliff of politics, the cliff of our relationships, or the cliff of hanging on to a simple, single memory of the way life used to be (or what we had hoped it would be by now)?
What I want to say to you is this: we’ve got to pull it together. We have no choice.
I believe you and I and millions of others can come out on the other side of this pandemic with love and redemption and kindness – and, better yet, be smarter, funnier, happier, more alive, more creative, more intimate, stronger, faster, cooler, with better haircuts and better scores – and become the heroes that only WE can be.
We’ve gotta do this. And we can start right now …
MICHAEL MOORE, DOCUMENTARY FILM-MAKER – ‘RUMBLE WITH MICHAEL MOORE’
BREAKTHROUGH
Someday,
after mastering
the wind, the waves,
the tides and gravity,
we shall harness for God
the energies of love …
and then,
for the second time
in the history of the world
man will discover fire.
TEILHARD DE CHARDIN
PRESS ON
Don’t
look
back.
You’re
not
going
that
way.
DUCKS
When God had finished the stars and whirl of coloured suns
He turned his mind from big things to fashion little ones;
beautiful tiny things (like daisies) He made, and then
He made the comical ones in case the minds of men
should stiffen and become
dull, humourless and glum,
and so forgetful of their Maker be
as to take even themselves quite seriously.
Caterpillars and cats are lively and excellent puns.
All God’s jokes are good – even the practical ones!
And as for the duck, I think God must have smiled a bit
seeing those bright eyes blink on the day he fashioned it.
And he’s probably laughing still at the sound that came
out of its bill!
FW HARVEY (WRITTEN WHILE A PRISONER-OF-WAR IN THE HOLZMINDEN CAMP, GERMANY)
THE BURDEN
I have decided
to
stick
with
LOVE,
because HATE is
too
great
a
burden
to
bear.
MARTIN LUTHER KING
GOTTA WANT IT:
No one changes unless they want to.
Not if you beg them.
Not if you shame them.
Not if you use reason, emotion or tough love.
There’s only one thing that makes someone change:
Their own realisation that they
need to do it.
