May 2, 2023

Thinking about how this time last year, I was getting ready to go to Santorini to co-lead a retreat and how weird and elastic time feels these days. All days.

But especially this particular month as we get ready to officially enter my favorite season, the one filled with sunshine and spontaneity and last-minute moments of saying yes.

All I actually want to say today is this:

The timeline you’re operating on, the one where you’ll be happy when ______.

It’s not real.

If you look back at the trajectory of your life, you always thought that achieving that one more thing was going to allow you to finally reach some definable state of happiness. But achievement by its very nature doesn’t normally lead to blissful nirvana. It leads to wanting and desiring more achievement.

There’s nothing wrong with that, at all. In fact, I’d say that every experience you have is human and beautiful and blissful (if you can accept it as such).

But what if, even now, even with everything that’s going on in your life and in the world, what if you could find happiness in the little things? Happiness in moments that are mundane or not exciting or perhaps downright boring?

I believe in goals and writing down what we want to achieve and I believe in working hard towards them. And I equally believe in being kinder and gentler with ourselves and allowing for, as Mary Oliver so eloquently put it, “the soft animal of our body to love what it loves”.

Put in the work, internally, to really allowing yourself to sit with so-called good/bad feelings. And allow yourself to be perfectly imperfect.

And remember, when all else fails— our bodies are the gatekeepers of our human experience. Move yours. Don’t think about what it looks like. Do it again. You are so deserving of love.