Everything will change

And other Sunday reminders/notes to self: everything is impermanent. Focus. Be a beacon.

Dear beloved readers,

In the spirit of practicing with personal and collective overwhelm, in the spirit of writing our way through and beyond, here are some Sunday reminders I am practicing with today. They’re notes to self, but I hope they might serve you if you need to hear them, too.

Everything is impermanent. Everything will change.

Yes, even this - this moment, this newsletter, the emotion you are feeling, me, you, whatever is going on in your life, for better or for worse - it’s all impermanent. Many of the great wisdom traditions have some variation of this teaching (Buddhism and Octavia Butler’s writing are where I have received it the most profoundly). Everything will change and everything is change and nothing lasts in its current form and manifestation.

Everything is impermanent, even this administration, this empire. Everything will change. The thing is, of course, change itself is neutral, non-directional. We can’t stop change from happening, but we can shape its direction (Octavia again, and adrienne maree brown). Everything changes, but how it changes is actually up to us (and many forces beyond what we can fully comprehend). We are responsible for our contribution to the shaping, but we are never shaping it alone.

When you love something, impermanence can be a hard truth to swallow. I find it’s easier to reckon with my own impermanence than that of those I love, especially my daughter. But when we reckon with the reality of impermanence, it helps us live differently - more deeply.

When something is hard, impermanence can be a lifeline. This too shall pass. It doesn’t feel like it, but it will. It has to. Everything does.

How might you live this moment differently if you can fully feel and embody that it will not last?
How do you want to shape change in this moment, even in the smallest ways?
If everything will change, how does that make you want to live?

When I acknowledge the impermanence of the bougainvillea blossoms and the rainbow, I can dwell in their beauty even more.

Do the next thing (focus). Be strategic with your attention (adrienne maree brown).

You don’t have to do everything. You can’t. But do the thing that is in front of you, the life around you that you can take care of, protect, nurture, love. Including your own (especially your own).

Maybe it is just attending to this breath, right here. Maybe taking a deeper one.

The engineered overwhelm and chaos being enacted by those in power is designed so that we feel too overwhelmed to do anything. So that we feel immobilized.

Mindfulness, at its heart, is simply the energy of being fully present in this moment, giving it our full attention. Mindfulness is also about taking right action, doing what needs doing, and knowing what needs to be done from a place of compassion. Mindfulness, right now (and always), can be a life raft, anchoring us to the present moment, helping us to do the thing that needs to be done, right in front of us, with the fullness of our attention. Even, perhaps especially, when the present moment feels hard.

“Be strategic with your attention” adrienne maree brown recently said on the For the Wild podcast on her book Loving Corrections. In a moment of overwhelm and chaos, when we are being inundated every day, being strategic with our attention feels like an essential survival strategy. Put another way: FOCUS.

We can’t do everything, but we can be strategic with what we need to do, and do the next thing with all the love, care, and attention we can muster, caring for the life in front of us and around us, the life we touch. We can know that in doing that, we are helping shape change in that direction.

Be a beacon.

Speaking of chaos and things that need doing: such is the reminders list on my phone. I keep passwords, writing ideas, notes to self, questions, quotes from podcasts, actual shopping lists, random numbers that I cannot tell you what they mean or where they came from. Amidst the chaos of this list, there are some gems. One that struck me today as I scrolled through it was:

BE A BEACON.

In the absolute chaos of this moment, amidst the overhwelm, how can we be beacons for each other?

Margaret Wheatley, in her most recent work, Restoring Sanity, talks about the need to create islands of sanity. She writes:

An Island of Sanity is a gift of possibility and refuge created by people’s commitment to form healthy community to do meaningful work. It requires sane leaders with unshakable faith in people’s innate generosity, creativity, and kindness. It sets itself apart as an island to protect itself from the life-destroying dynamics, policies, and behaviors that oppress and deny the human spirit. No matter what is happening around us, we can discover practices that enliven our human spirits and produce meaningful contributions for this time.

We need each other, and we can’t do any of this alone. Creating islands of sanity means being beacons for ourselves and each other, calling out to and finding each other, and gathering our energy and attention, and acting together. Being life rafts for each other. Pooling our energy and resources, our love and our care.

Alone in the ocean, we might drown. Holding onto each other, we might create an island. May our islands find each other.

Those are my notes to self today, my Sunday practices. What are yours?

Sending you off with a song from the Postal Service, who sing: everything will change, ooohhhh ooohhhh…

Loving you,

Steph