All it needs is some TLC

About a year ago I burned myself on my neck with a curling iron rushing to get ready in a beautiful bathroom at The Wynn in Las Vegas. (No more rush!) It was nothing serious, fortunately, but it was in a visible spot and I was super hard on myself for hurting myself and making such a silly mistake, and I also was superficially concerned about it leaving a scar, and having to be a reminder that I’d look at every day of how careless I’d been. (Something, of course, I could choose to not add meaning to, but found incredibly hard to do in the moment[s] of emotion.)

My friend Divya, who happens to be a doctor and therapist (a psychiatrist, specifically) and therefore a great listener and the perfect person to soothe my concerns, happened to visit not long after. “Let me look,” she said. “No, it’ll be OK. All it needs is some TLC.” It was so sweet, and so simple, and she was so right. I took care to cover it, to apply nourishing creams, to protect it with SPF. These days it’s a barely visible, and when I notice it, it instead reminds me of my friend, her care, and that all things can heal with time, gentleness and love.

For Dr. Divy, with gratitude for the forever reminder of the power of TLC

Our thoughts are just thoughts

I had this thought the other day. Our thoughts are just thoughts. They are not our responsibility; but what we do with them, is. Do we choose to identify? Do we hold on? Do we let them go, and fall away to the earth to be absorbed and transformed into whatever may be needed?

And for some guidance on moving past them, and transmuted them, I highly recommend Byron Katie’s Four Liberating Questions.

Who am i without this? / Byron Katie's Four Questions

Author Byron Katie developing something called Four Liberating Questions, a brief self-inquiry process that is as simple as it is profound. It’s also called “The Work,” and I’ve found it to be an incredibly effective method to move beyond thought traps, controlling thoughts and negative thoughts. The background:

I discovered that when I believed my thoughts I suffered, but when I didn’t believe them I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that. I found that suffering is optional. I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always. And I invite you not to believe me. I invite you to test it for yourself.

– Byron Katie

And now for The Questions. It goes like this:

  1. Is it true?

  2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?

  3. How do you react when you believe that thought?

  4. Who would you be without the thought?

When I’ve shared it with others, they’ve found it as powerful and effective as I have. At this point, I find myself moving through the questions almost automatically, often in my head. When I feel particularly stuck, however, and especially when I first began using them, I would journal out the questions and my responses.

I’ve made it a bit of my own by asking myself the question, “Who am I without this?” when I find myself particularly attached to an idea, thought or identity. It’s sometimes scary to answer, but on the other side of all those feelings, it’s always liberating.

See Byron Katie’s page for more, including the invitation on the home page: “Meet your Internal Wisdom. The Work is meditation. It is a method of inquiry born directly out of Byron Katie’s experience. This practice allows you to access the wisdom that always exists within you.”

That's a tomorrow solution

Rather than saying “that’s a problem for tomorrow,” or “that’s a tomorrow problem,” I’ve started instead to say, “that’s a solution for tomorrow,” or, “that’s a tomorrow solution,” and it’s such as silly and simple change-up, that it always makes me smile.

And like my manicurist in San Juan said after noticing how anxiousness had affected my nails, lo que no se resuelve hoy, se resuelve mañana. Or, what isn’t solved today, is solved tomorrow.”

I’ve also heard this mental trick of, when being faced with a problem solution opportunity, saying “I’m so grateful this has already been resolved,” (and saying it with your chest, or saying it with heart! So it’s felt.) Then you get to wait for it to unfold, now in a more easeful place of knowing—feeling—that it will happen. It’s something of a fun little future trust fall.

Also, a reminder to self that the simplest solution is is usually the best solution.

Everything I've ever wanted

Today, a friend messaged me that she had the thought, the realization, that she has everything she’s ever wanted. It’s maybe not been in the moment she thought it would be, or the manner she expected. Still, she’s gotten it, and she still has it. Everything she’s ever wanted.

It’s a thought I’ve had before, and one I was meant to hear again, right then. A reoriented perspective on what is here right now, and a reminder. Reminders to release the timeline, release the constraints, and let be as big and beautiful as it is. Everything I’ve ever wanted. That, and more.

She ended it, too, with “How lucky am I,” and I loved reading it as a statement. How lucky is she, and how lucky am I, and how important that we see that—that we are lucky, and also that we choose to see—that we have everything we’ve ever wanted.

"There is no best in music"

Harry Styles was just awarded Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, and I was disappointed. I wanted Bad Bunny, “Benito,” to win; I wanted it to be the “we’ve made it” moment of Latin music that I feel like it deserves to be, that the impact Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” album has had on me and so many others around the world, an impact shown in numbers, in streams, and felt deep and in the heart, in the way I know so many people feel about musicians and music they love. It’s just that it was this album; it was this moment.

In Styles’ acceptance speech (and I do adore and appreciate him as an artist, I will say!) he said, “We all know there is no best in music.” And that is so beautiful, so important to note, and so true. All art that is meaningful, beautiful, created out of love, in passion, out of necessity, for contribution, as a gift. I texted it to a friend, and she responded, “No favorites.” Because I’ve had this thing for some time now of saying I don’t believe in a “favorite,” a “best”; when everything fulfills, fills and inspires me in such different and special ways. I’ll often get asked what my “favorite” travel destination is/was when people find out I was a travel journalist. How to answer that? There are places I’ve met in different states and ways; places that have met me, suprised me, challenged me, changed me. So much of it was about who I was at that moment, too.

There is no best (a supremacist concept), and I choose not to play favorites. We do our best, which is always changing, to be our best, which is always changing, in every moment. I choose not to play favorites, and instead appreciate each moment for what it gives, for what it is.

Dedicated to Bad Bunny and “Un Verano Sin Ti,” my Album of the Year

"Live the questions"

I’ve loved this concept of “live the questions,” thanks to the beautiful words of Rilke, since first hearing it in a Marginalian newsletter. It feels more playful, even more empowering, to hold the concept of, “live the questions” than to just “release the ‘how’,” (and trust).

“…Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer," - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet.

“Live the questions now… live your way into the answer.” And answers, plural, I would say. Because the way of life is many ways.

And, sometimes, the answers come without the questions.