What to do? Our One Wild and Precious Life.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” –Mary Oliver

What to do with my one wild and precious life? There has been a lot of conversation going on about this question as the New Year approaches. And I personally do not find making a list of resolutions very satisfying or effective in answering, so I thought I would offer an alternative. 

Why not just be more human?

What I mean by this, is that it might be more to the point to find reasons to work with our very human natures—the flaws and the fabulousness—not with an eye to sanitizing our lives of the flaws till we are perfect images of balance, tolerance and compassionate presence, but taking a more gentle, less aggressive approach, to improve by doing something simple like appreciate our humanity in spite of its obvious faults.

How about giving resolutions, and ourselves, a break, and instead merely:

·      Make our life an offering—begin the year with the truly compassionate act of just accepting and offering ourselves, as we are, in all the fullness of our humanity (happy, sad, stiff, relaxed, inspired, depressed ... ). This is all fuel for the fires of transformation that take us from where we are now to the places we’d like to be (i.e. more consistently content and peaceful places—our happy places). 

·      Express gratitude—wake up to the ordinary blessings that are ours to enjoy, be more aware and appreciative of life in general. For as the Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh has observed: “Ordinary things wear lovely wings.” We need to allow ourselves to be blessed by it all.

·      Dedicate any merit—invoke a benediction acknowledging that any heart-opening, insight and intelligence that ripple from us out into the environment around us, aren't only about 'marvelous 'ole me'.

So, what do I plan to do with my one wild and precious life? I plan to honour its simplicity and complexity—to live with integrity and passion, to make mistakes and enjoy successes, to be fearfully, courageously, wondrously and inevitably all that I am … tragically and beautifully human.

What else can be done?

Confidence Doesn't Make You Sexy ... Wha?!

Confidence is as much an elusive state, as happiness for many people. So, I thought it might be useful to take a closer look at what is meant by the word and why we care.

The Oxford English dictionary defines confidence this way: “…a feeling of self-assurance arising from an appreciation of one’s own abilities.” Not very satisfying, so I looked up self-assurance: “…confidence in one’s own abilities or character.” Thus, the dog is now chasing its own tail.

Personally, I have observed that there are occasions when I feel ‘confident’ and those when I experience feelings of doubt and uncertainty—flux, in other words. I’m thinking that there isn’t anything wrong with this per se, for as Voltaire has famously been quoted as asserting: “Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.”

And what is it we are really jonesing after in the whole notion of confidence anyway; the certainty that we will never experience failure, self-doubt or fear again?

Not gonna happen.

What about simply being genuine—transcending the whole notion of confidence and instead rooting ourselves in being completely human, a radical self-acceptance that requires us not only to live with the discomfort of uncertainty and imperfection, but to place a little faith in ourselves for no other reason than that we exist, we're here?

We are each of us, after all, gifted with abilities of infinite variety and expression. Why not place some value on simply exploring those qualities and invest in our creative potential in becoming the fullest, most beautiful expression of our unique selves?

Questions of confidence become something of a moot point when we take full ownership of our lives in this way.

Not convinced? Think ‘confidence’ makes you sexy? Observation reveals that more often than not, all that adherence to that idea does is warp people into poseurs—tragically distorted versions of who they think they should be instead of being who they actually are. How is that sexy?

Sorry to be the big heavy, but I think that confidence itself may be a completely over-rated ideal, and one that comes greatly at the expense of authenticity and soul (these are sexy).

Living a real, sensual and satisfying life requires only that we be who we are by design, much as a lily in its bulb is by design a lily and not a tulip, nor a rose.

Confidence doesn’t enter into it.

Be who you are.

Personal Sovereignty - The discovery that your own heart lights the way.

“The embodiment of dignity inwardly and outwardly immediately reflects and radiates the sovereignty of your life, that you are who and what you are beyond all words, concepts and descriptions, and beyond what anybody else thinks about you, or even what you think of yourself. It is a dignity without self-assertion, not driving forward toward anything, nor recoiling from anything—a balancing in sheer presence.” –Jon Kabat-Zinn

Personal sovereignty, then, is its own reward, something that exists independent of our intimate connections and experiences with others—it is the intimate inhabiting of our own life. Right here. Right now.

In its barest aspect—sheer presence.

Our relationships are important too, but they are ultimately gifts. Sometimes the dance lasts a lifetime, sometimes an evening. The point is never to forget that answers to personal fulfillment are not to be found in the life of others, but the life inside ourselves.

In the words of Jorge Luis Borges:

“So plant your garden and decorate your own soul,

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.”

Which is to say, self-possession (personal sovereignty) is an inward journey characterized by difficulty, discipline and the knowledge that the moment we are in, is the liminal space holding all that we long for, that we might use whatever circumstances we may find ourselves in as fodder for eliciting the warmth, intimacy and love we so crave.

Locate your heart and you locate the source from which all the rest flows.

Kintsukuroi - The gentle art of soul restoration.

Kintsukuroi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold resin—idea being to honour the damage done to the pottery by filling the cracks with gold, and in the process elevate them to works of art.

For traditional Japanese philosophy holds that when something has suffered damage and has a history, it becomes more beautiful.

Imperfection is not so honoured in the West, but still there have been those making a case for its necessity. In the words of the prominent Victorian social thinker John Ruskin:

“Imperfection is in some way sort of essential to all that we know of life. It is the sign of life in a mortal body, that is to say, of a state of progress and change. Nothing that lives is, or can be, rigidly perfect; part of it is decaying, part nascent… And in all things that live there are certain irregularities and deficiencies which are not only signs of life, but sources of beauty… To banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be effort, and the law of human judgment, mercy.”

Despite the worn out nature of the metaphor, I still think it useful to think of human flaws and weaknesses in this regard—to be merciful and generous in seeing them not only as signs of life, but sources of beauty as well.

Because it really doesn’t serve us (humanity as a whole) to bastardize the flaws and failings of one another. That only leaves mental and emotional damage in its wake from all the consequent flogging.

And who are we to judge the life of another or even ourselves when so little is seen, known or understood about any of it?

Better to be curious—study the flaws more intelligently and carefully, see where that takes us in terms of broader understanding, and then utilize creative approaches to reparation and healing with the insight garnered.

For me that is the beauty of Kintsukuroi.

It inspires an intelligent, heart-informed approach to well-being, by using whatever comes our way, as means by which to augment greater depth and richness of soul—transforming us from merely broken vessels to objets d’art .