#73: Take care of yourselves during these challenging times

On staying present and compassionate to fight myopic thinking

Hi, friends,

My yoga teacher has been battling stage four cancer for over a decade. Despite this —or perhaps because of this— she is an incredibly heartfelt, joyous, and compassionate person. Even when she has double vision (a side effect of chemo), and sees the park where she teaches, and her students, from the perspective of a trippy psychedelic movie, she kills it in every class.

Like yesterday, at the end of class, she guided us to close our practice by placing our hands to our hearts and taking a deep breath, while she shared some wisdom about the current state of our world.

Here’s what she said:

There are truly awful horrible events taking place in our country and in our world. It’s extremely important that we keep our hearts open, and our voices.

Keeping my voice open is why I write. A pen, and pixels on a screen, are my weapon of choice.

rafa0 @rafathebuilder

Convincing people to write publicly about their knowledge is hard - and yet is the single most useful thing (besides therapy and community) that I’ve seen for personal and professional growth.

And when it comes to the truly awful horrible events taking place around us, does anyone else feel like we’re turning on ourselves? Does anyone else feel like the world is becoming more myopic?

As seen on Twitter:

We forget that we, humans, were not meant to sit in front of a computer screen all day. The screen’s light, the screen’s size, and the virtual reality we enter, does funky harmful things to our brain and to our nervous system. It’s a slow, slow, burn, that eventually ignites into a fire, unless we train ourselves to break away and seek solace in the real world, with real people and real nature.

I have been starting my days by biking down to the ocean. I bring a notebook and a pen and just allow the beach, the ocean, the birds, to hold and support me, reminding myself that I am not in nature — I am nature.

I have more thoughts but I don’t want to ramble. There’s too much of that these days. I’m seeking clarity of thought, and quality, so I’m going to submit this draft to the Foster workflow and collect feedback from fellow writers, allowing them to hold and support me as I strive to make my writing better.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with some food for thought:

Take care of yourselves, my friends, during these challenging times. ❤️