unfold
Hello and happy Sunday to you! How have you been treating yourself so far today? Could you be a bit gentler with yourself? I bet you could. I’m certainly working on this all the time. I’m learning that there’s a difference between acknowledging weaknesses and needlessly beating yourself up in places and times you feel you’ve failed. Acknowledgement allows you to accept where you’re at with grace and know that you can do better. The beating yourself up—the head in hands, grunt from deep within, obsessive spiral—is mean. You wouldn’t let a friend treat you that way when you’ve messed up (especially when it was only a perceived mistake!), so you shouldn’t speak to yourself that way either.
There are times that I can all-too-vividly remember myself slouched off the side of the couch, wishing I had a rewind button to go back and not do that thing that is making me cringe at myself. It’s as if I need my physical state to mirror the tense twisting and turning that’s happening in my mind. In thinking about this, I’m reminded of a line from Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” I’ve felt worse replaying uncomfortable scenarios than I have when, say, realizing I’d just sliced my finger open with an X-Acto knife in 10th grade art class in front of my crush, requiring stitches. Our minds magnify our misfortunes, blowing them up to be much worse than they really were. Hey, maybe you were awkward. But, as the popular bad-driver meme posits, “But did you die?” No. As much as you wish you could crawl out of your skin and into a totally different body to start a new life, it is in the past. You know you’ll probably laugh about it in a week, a month, a year. So, shake it out (literally, move your body and shake out the discomfort) and move forward. Forgive yourself for being awkward. Forgive yourself for saying the wrong thing. Forgive your poor timing. Forgive your forgetfulness. It’s okay. You’re only human. We make mistakes so we can learn from them. I’m sure you’ll notice yourself take a breath before you speak more frequently in the future—a practice you will surely thank yourself for.
Brain collage
Images within collage (clockwise): @alejna99, @photosof.things, and @janullob
Spellbound
Poem by Emily Brontë on being transfixed by nature
The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.
“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment.”
— the recently departed and entirely inimitable Joan Didion
Thanks for reading. I hope your ☕️ is extra delicious today. Seek out the 🌞 if you can. See you next time.
P.S. If you’re in need of something to read, I’m thoroughly enjoying Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney.
