Now is the time... for deliciously soppy "best of" lists. Sitting back and reflecting upon the last year, I cannot say that I have done all the things I had hoped to have done. Yet I have learned more that I could have imagined. So here is a list of those lessons. I hope they are as valuable to you as they are to me.
1. wabi-sabi
The art of appreciating life for what it is.
Via Sarah Wilson... "Wabi sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection... Through wabi-sabi we learn to embrace our scars, rust, uneven finishes and the “bloom” of time they represent."
This beautiful little film The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom illustrates wabi-sabi perfectly.
"Even when the flower falls, we love it. That’s the heart of the Japanese person. Flowers dying is not a sad thing."
Read more here.
2. beautiful people do not just happen
And similarly, people are all the more beautiful for the hardship they endure.
"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Read more here. See also The beauty of the well (a reflection on the Queensland floods).
3. live wholeheartedly
Brene Brown's TedTalk and book, The Gifts of Imperfection, moved me to (try to) be a better, more open, more whole person.
In short...
Connection is why we're here.
Yet we struggle to connect.
What stands in the way of connection is shame: the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me that if other people know or see it I won't be worthy of connection?
The key to overcoming shame is believing that we are worthy of love and belonging.
Read more here.
4. you have the right to choose your own life
"You’re not a kid anymore. You have the right to choose your own life. You can start again. If you want a cat, all you have to do is choose a life in which you can have a cat. It’s simple. It’s your right."
— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
It's a simple, some would say obvious, concept but getting lost in a world of what we "should" be doing and choosing is all too easy. Haruki's words, along with a column written by Sarah Wilson, helped me to realise that I am free.
A few days ago, I discovered that I am a scanner. "A scanner", self-help author Barbara Sher explained in an interview with Sarah Wilson, "is genetically wired to be fanatically interested in multiple things at once".
...
So I have decided that when it comes to choosing my own life, I choose to embrace scanning. As of now, I am a writer, blogger, makeup artist, aspiring novelist, avid reader, lover, daughter, sister, friend, terrible cook. And in the future, I want to learn Italian, perfect my French, travel the world, relearn the piano and cello; be a novelist, journalist, poet, screenwriter, documentary-maker, artist, teacher, wife, mother, pet-owner. Learn as much as I can, about everything. Feel my way through life, acting on instinct: what feels right, deep down in my heart.
Read more here.
5. protect the work
An email from Seth Godin prompted me to ponder how important it is to cherish and nurture our relationships with those who help to propel us along our own paths, boost our self-worth, protect what makes us special.
Read more here.
6. we are all dewdrops
"The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass."
— Dōgen
It's okay to be insignificant.
Read more here. See also Minor writers and Un point.
7. the truest, safest happiness is hidden
[Of her marriage to Leonard Woolf]: "The immense success of our life is, I think, that our treasure is hid away; or rather in such common things that nothing can touch it."
– Virginia Woolf, Diaries, June 14, 1925
Read more here.
8. doing what you like is freedom, liking what you do is happiness
I think the more ingrained in life we become (the older we are, the stronger our friendships, the more responsibility we bear upon our shoulders), the less freedom we are granted. And so our happiness depends not upon being free to do what we like, but finding happiness within our lot in life: bringing joy to the less-than-thrilling job, transforming an awkward social encounter into a delightful exchange and taking pleasure in the weekly grocery shopping trip. For it is not life that brings us happiness, but we who bring happiness to life.
Read more here.
9. self-esteem is revolutionary
"If you don’t have self-esteem, you will hesitate to do anything in your life. You will hesitate to report a rape. You will hesitate to defend yourself when you are discriminated against because of your race, your sexuality, your size, your gender. You will hesitate to vote; you will hesitate to dream. For us to have self-esteem is truly an act of revolution, and our revolution is long overdue."
— Margaret Cho
It took me a long time to get to this place, but I am here, and here it is: it is our right, nay, our responsibility, to spend time working on ourselves.
10. don't like, love.
Jonathan Franzen's passionate railing against Facebook-esque liking and his advocacy for love encourages me to jump in, head first, clothes on, heart on my sleeve. Even though it's scary. It's worth it.
"Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.
When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there’s a very real danger that you might love some of them.
And who knows what might happen to you then?"
Read more here.
11. it's just not that good
Ira Glass' advice to beginners comforted me. It's only natural that it will take time for my work to be good. And recognising that it's just not that good yet is the first step to getting to where I want to be.
"It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."
Read more here.
12. the sad, beautiful fact that we're going to miss almost everything
"...what we've seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean, and turning your back on the ocean to stare into the cup can't change that".
And appreciate it, because -
"Imagine if you'd seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good.... That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think."
Read more here.
13. my prayer
I searched for my prayer, and settled upon -
"I really just want to be warm, yellow light that pours over everyone I love."
— Conor Oberst
Read more here.
14. the answers are always inside the problem, not outside
Read more here.
15. untranslatable words
I put together a mini dictionary of beautifully evocative foreign words.
Duende (Spanish)
While originally used to describe a mythical, spritelike entity that possesses humans and creates the feeling of awe of one’s surroundings in nature, its meaning has transitioned into referring to “the mysterious power that a work of art has to deeply move a person.”
16. confidence = happiness = knowing what you love
Haruki Murakami handed me another life lesson in an interview with the Guardian, this time to do with the root of confidence -
How, then, did he find the confidence to do what he wanted?
"Confidence; as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I love cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved. Those three things haven't changed from my childhood. I know what I love, still, now. That's a confidence. If you don't know what you love, you are lost."
Read more here.
17. the best artists are the ones that keep showing up
Elizabeth Gilbert's TedTalk on creativity:
"Don’t be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then ‘Ole!’ And if not, do your dance anyhow. And ‘Ole!’ to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. ‘Ole!’ to you, nonetheless,just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up."
18. This is (our) story
And finally... the most touching thing I have seen all year.
18-year-old Ben Breedlove posted this two-part video series online on December 18th, called This Is My Story. He shares the story of his brushes with death, the result of a heart condition.
His story reiterated everything I learned this year. The preciousness of life; the beauty that can arise from the most awful situations; to live fully, openly and truthfully; love is everything; and all of us have a story to tell, however small we may feel.
Thank you to everybody who has read my blog this year. Your support and encouragement means the world to me. Here's to a wonderful 2012, filled with fun, good books and love.
Happy New Year!
1 comments:
Wow these are amazing!! Your blog is truly beautiful in an unique way :)
Read my version of things I learned in 2011. Mine is more of a collection of quotes actually. And I stole a few from you xx
www.lovelittleapple.blogspot.com
Happy New Year!
Post a Comment