#13 in a series of wild and precious things that help you accept uncertainty.
- TWIL (This Week I Learned.)
This week I learned about uncertainty. Is there anything more authentic and vulnerable than facing uncertainty? And, come on, I can’t be the only one — I find uncertainty thrilling and terrifying at once. A recent walk ended at one of my favorite waterfalls. A friend and I were captivated by it and maybe this is why? It is certainty and uncertainty at the same time. It is always changing and always present.
Transition to Spring
2. Quote
“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver, The Summer Day
“You lose more of yourself than you redeem
doing the decent thing. Keep at a tangent.
When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,” — Seamus Heaney, Station Island, Sequence XII
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.” Seneca
3. Prompt
What else should you do? — try this: write this question as many times as you dare and answer it until you have no more answers.
Consider this: It’s your one wild and precious life. You are the steward. You have no idea how long you get. What will you do?
4. Quest
I can’t be alone in finding the above quotes and prompts terrifying :) Try this: Try to get out into nature each day this week. Breathe. Just breathe deeply. Own the fact that you are stewarding this body you inhabit. You are stewarding this life you have been gifted. Breathe.
Try this literally 20 minutes each day in nature.
5. Wayback
March 2, 1990 : Nelson Mandela is elected deputy President of the ANC.
6. POD Poem of the day —
Here is a link to buy Station Island by Seamus Heaney.
And here is Summer Day by Mary Oliver.
7. Song (Uncertainty.)
8. Video. (The School of Life on Self-Compassion)
9. Hero: Alain de Botton, Philosopher
Why? He’s my favorite atheist. He has a thing now called The School of Life, but I first heard of him in an interview at the RSA. I don’t agree with everything he does and says, but I respect him a ton. I believe he’s doing the work.
10. Take Care of Yourself This Week!