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As we leave the mesas behind, we doodle and laugh our way toward out destinies together, to a place of no more lonely nights.

Adam Sass, from Your Lonely Nights Are Over

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I had gotten distracted, but now I could focus, and once I was rested, I was going to be ready for the big game.

Andrea L. Rogers, from "Shame on the Moon"

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Do not let the day end without having grown a little, without being happy, without having risen your dreams. Do not let yourself be overcome by disappointment. Do not let anyone take away the right to express yourself, which is almost a duty. Do not forsake the yearning to make your life something extraordinary.

Walt Whitman; 1819-1892

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Omg 💔😭

PARK THAT CAR DROP THAT PHONE SLEEP ON THE FLOOR DREAM ABOUT ME

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True. Gotta make sure you’re in the right terroir too though 🌱🌺

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Im trying ! 😫

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“I could say surrender until it sounds like a song or salve. I could hold your love in my mouth and make pearls of it.”

— C. T. Salazar, from “You Called Me Castaway and I Called You,” micro collection This Might Have Meant Fire: Poems, INCH quarterly (no.39, Summer 2019)

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Cover of my new meditation journal.

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Peace requires us to surrender our illusions of control. We can love and care for others but we cannot possess our children, lovers, family, or friends. We can assist them, pray for them, and wish them well, yet in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their thoughts and actions, not on our wishes.

Jack Kornfield

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May Sarton, from Journal of a Solitude

[Text ID: Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass.

Let it go.]

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Time: Magic and Mastery

"Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small." -- Lao Tzu

Potent yet succinct, this seed of wisdom contains an essential key to a life of mastery.

In his seminal comic book masterpiece titled The Invisibles, Grant Morrison speaks of the 5th dimension--a dimension that exists outside of space and time.

(Morrison happens to be an all time favorite author of mine, as well as a formidable philosopher-magician. As an aside, he openly shares how his insight into the 5th dimension came as consequence from his abduction by aliens in Katmandu in 1994.)

What does it mean for a dimension to exist outside of space and time, according to Morrison?

One consequence of a dimension outside of time's flow is that nothing grows there. Growth both implies and requires the dimension of time, of change. And so he concluded that the utility of the 4 dimensions (3 dimensions of space + 1 dimension of time) was to grow things.

As humans, we often feel as though we are victims of time. Life is short, we are mortal, and everything we are is ultimately eroded by time. It's also why we regard important accomplishments as things that will stand the test of time, things that will outlive us.

But the wisdom of Lao Tzu's aphorism is a major tip for how to use the dimension of time to your advantage. If you start now and start small, growing and building over time, incredible feats are possible for you.

It also makes me think of a meme I once saw, which went something like this:

"In time travel stories, whenever people travel back in time, they are always careful because they're worried that small changes can have drastic consequences for the future. But no one lives that way in the present."

To put it simply: small changes in our daily lives add up to big things in the future. Whether that's growing a meditation practice from 5 minutes a day to 1 hour, taking up a new exercise regimen, learning a new skill, or changing the entire direction of your life.

In college, I majored in English with a concentration in creative writing. After I graduated in 2011, I worked in the movie industry for a few years. Now I'm more than halfway through my training in head and neck surgery. How did that happen?

In 2013, I decided to abandon my pursuits in film (that's another story) and re-orient my path toward becoming a doctor. It would be 7 years before I finally had my MD and started residency. I took it all one step at a time. Eventually it added up to where I am now.

I underwent a slow but intimate transformation during the time between when I made that decision and received my diploma. The same goes for my meditation practice and exercise regimen. I started small, grew it daily, and now I have something solid with both.

While sudden and significant life changes can be exciting and dramatic, it is our sustained effort over time that can be relied upon most to endure with us for life. When formidable aims and accomplishments are reduced to their initial components, we realize they are possible even for us. Manipulating and working with the passage of time in this way is its own kind of magic.

And in the end, it is not the objects we accumulate nor is it the experiences we gather that comprise a worthwhile life.

The real manifestation of a good life is a good person.

LY

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😞

— Adonis, translated by Khaled Mattawa

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“Having very broad and abstract goals may maintain and exacerbate depression.  Goals that are not specific are more ambiguous and, therefore, harder to visualise.  If goals are hard to visualise it may result in reduced expectation of realising them which in turn results in lower motivation to try and achieve them.“