Tag: Meditation

My Last Day on Earth

My Last Day on Earth

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

With One Foot Dangling Over the Edge of the Universe

“If today were the last day of your life, would

you want to do what you are about to do today?”

~ Steve Jobs

Rumor has it that Steve Jobs asked himself this question every day in the mirror. It’s said that if he had enough days in a row when the answer was no, he’d do something else. Jobs was dead at 56.

Today, we watched another visionary dent the universe (almost literally). If today were Jeff Bezos’s last day on earth, he’d probably be okay with it. I’d be okay if it were my last day having watched his accomplishment from way down here. Good for him. Good for them. I like my brother, too, and I’d take him up with me.

WHAT’S IT FOR? Going into space isn’t for anything, except to DO IT. They didn’t make money, they spent LOTS. They learned even more, and they proved their worth to themselves, if no one else. Did anyone else really matter? Probably not.

WHAT DOES IT REMIND ME OF?
The Bezos launch reminded me of years past when we raced for space with other countries. Now our local visionaries compete with one another, and the media runs amok. It’s all wonderful. We used to rely on a war machine to feed for innovation and invention. Now, our CEOs feed their curiosity and, okay, their egos, but that’s okay.

IT’S MY LAST DAY ON EARTH [Pretend!]

I watched the rocket ship, walked my dog, listened to an amazing woman Melissa Renzi share her poetry, her love, and her vulnerability.

THIS IS THE POEM FROM MELISA RENZI’s BLOG POST on 7/6/21

(I challenge you to get through it with dry eyes.)

Love more today

Inspired by and in honor of Danay DiVirgilio

Love more today
Not tomorrow, not yesterday, not next year

Love more today
This very second, right now
You can do it, I believe in you
Be present with the feelings
All of them, all of you
This is not new
Since the beginning of time

In the infinity that is and was always
There is only one thing
And that thing is Love

Love more today
Not tomorrow, not yesterday, not next year

I see you, I hear you, I love you
I feel your Love, I feel your fear
I see you shedding a tear
All the Love you’re withholding
Give it up, give it away, let it go
Your life is unfolding

Love more today
Really, it is the only way
Close your eyes, yes, let’s do it right now
Send your love to someone who needs it the most

Send your love to someone who is easy to love

Now to someone who is hard to love
See, love doesn’t know the difference
Love is the great equalizer
Breaking through barriers of time and space

With total ease and infinite grace

Love is bigger than here and now

Love is wonder, love is how.
Love is deeper than good or bad
It’s so much wider than happy or sad

Love is not a drop in the ocean

Love is the ocean

So love more today
Not tomorrow, not yesterday, not next year

Really darling, there is nothing to fear
Open your eyes to the wisdom of love
See the world through its freedom, a dove

From high up above and all the way down

Love the whole rainbow, love the whole town

Love the sadness and love the grief
Love the Joy and love the belief
That Love is forever

And before I go, I want you to know:

It is okay to laugh and it is okay to cry

It is okay to ask “Why?”
Yes, really I ask you, I ask you to try

To love more today
In honor of the Spirit that is Danay

-Melissa Renzi

Amherst, MA

July 2020

*The words “Love more today” first appeared in an email from Michael DiVirgilio, sharing the news of Danay’s transition with family and friends. He asked friends to “Love More Today” as a way to honor her memory.

PS – I wrote this poem just days after Danay’s transition last summer. I read it at the memorial service under the trees in her backyard. Her presence was felt that day in the palpable Love that was there. And in the breeze of the trees above. Today it is a year. Honoring this beautiful human, friend, teacher, mother, mama. It was such a joy knowing you, friend. I treasure you always. Thank you for showing up in all the ways you do in my life and in the life of so many.

Good things, darling.

Love more today.

# # #

I hope it’s okay with you, Melissa, that I shared your poem. If this were my last day on earth, I would be happy, hanging one foot over the edge of our shared universe. Thank you for writing this piece and letting us know you better.

Thanks to Pixels.com for the image.

Enough

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

 

photography of body of water
Photo by Willian Was on Pexels.com

I Wish You Enough

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright no matter how gray the day may appear.


I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun even more.


I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive and everlasting.

I wish you enough pain so even the smallest of joys in life may appear bigger.


I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.

I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.


I wish you enough hellos to get you through the final good-bye.

*

I think we need to talk about “enough” today. I feel like our society does not ever have enough. We don’t have enough money. Time. Love. Youth. “Soul.” Well, that’s simply not true, is it? We have all we need. We can choose to have enough of all of those. We may not know it when our bills don’t get paid. Or we are out of time to do the things we want. We may feel unloved today. Or we may feel old. We may not have “soul” as we approach the written page or the musical paper or the dance floor. “I got nuthin’.”  Or “I don’t have enough of what it takes,” we say to ourselves.

That may be true today. But tomorrow, we may have that glimmer. That spark. That patience. Or we may have a way to save or make money. Find time to do what we want. Or we stop to feel a little extra sliver of appreciation for the few things we have. Even an old beat up pair of shoes is actually pretty sweet if we stop to be grateful, and not compare ourselves to someone down the block or around the corner. We may choose to be glad to have any shoes at all. Or feet.

That’s it. We can do so much if we stop, take stock, and appreciate who we are and how lucky we are. Our attitude determines our life view. And of course, everything is relative. We didn’t know we had enough until we wake up one morning and we’re out of whatever “that” was. Food. Money. Time. Because if you don’t wake up, for instance, you are definitely out of time.  But for today . . .

               . . . you have enough. 

 

The poem above is published in my collection, Giving My Self to the Wind. 

Leave Room in Your Suitcase

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

apple book break color
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

So, did you think this post was going to be about travel? Great. It is. But, it’s not.

Hopefully, we are all going somewhere. However, we are not always going on vacation. Or going out of town. Or going on a safari, per se. We are, however, traveling through life. We need to have our suitcase packed, our selves ready, open, and available to step, fly, jump, and fall forward into the next place. Our metaphorical bags should always be packed, as in why slow down to throw in a toothbrush when the next adventure may have toothbrushes waiting for you at the other end? Or better yet, we won’t need toothbrushes there at all. Our teeth will automatically be cleaned by busy nanobots grinning as they scrub, singing happy tunes, and making you happy to boot.

So while the suitcase should be ready to go, it should have room to add stuff. We want to leave space in the suitcase of our minds to put in cool new ideas, experience an image in a way we’ve never done so before, or taste a new aroma, or savor a different apple with a cool name like “Jazz” or “Envy.”

We save a spot for experimentation.  We can pause in the quietness to read an author we wouldn’t have tried without the clarity that white space in a suitcase brings. We can “hear” a not-my-usual color; “wear” a not-my-kind of music. (Not typos: Hear a color and wear music were on purpose.)

I invite you on your next journey to leave room in your suitcase. In fact, I will leave room in mine, too, and maybe we can meet in the middle.

 Always keep a bag packed!

“JOMO”

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

yellow plush toy
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

You’ve heard of FOMO… Fear Of Missing Out. I just heard of “JOMO.”

JOMO = Joy Of Missing Out.

That means forgetting Facebook, turning off Twitter, and ignoring Instagram. And evading E-Mail for a block of uninterrupted time. Call it what you will, it’s a way to decrease our addiction to the 24/7/365 bombardment of noise and distraction simply because we’re afraid we won’t know what our neighbor knows. We’ll miss the client’s email or an agent’s answer. They can wait.

JOMO is about allowing ourselves the joy of being in the moment.

Jason Fried, co-founder of 37Signals and maker of Basecamp reads a newspaper now! In a recent interview with Tim Ferriss, Jason said that knowing what’s going on in the world once a day is enough. Imagine.

The universe will continue without our seeing and hearing what happens every minute of every day. We’ll have more time for meditating, writing, painting, making music, reading books and lots more. Let’s call it Anti-Social Media. How’s that for a new term?

Unplug and enjoy life!

Starting

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

reason-1-coloredOh, my goodness. I had this fine idea that everyone is great at starting projects and that finishing is the problem. I forgot that many times people fail to start because they fear they will never finish. So finishing is still a huge challenge, no doubt about it, but the more pernicious problem is that a finely honed track record of non-finishing keeps people from the unbridled giddiness that comes from starting something. That, and fear of looking really dumb.

I hope you can take the first step. Whatever it is, try something new this week. It doesn’t have to be huge. You can start small. Try coffee black if you’re a cream and sugar person. Try changing your morning rituals. Try a different radio station. Take a meditation class or a couple of piano lessons at the local community center. Besides, taking lessons in something you’ve always wanted to but were afraid you’d be terrible at it is delightful. Why? Because it opens you to the freedom to look goofy. So what? No one is good on the first try. And no one is looking at you because they’re mostly afraid of how silly they look!

What about the following? Perhaps you are starting something that is too easy! Or you’re just a natural at whatever it is. And how lucky you are! You are really good at something, and you didn’t even know it. Excellent surprises await the brave.

Finishing is indeed a challenge, but try starting something to experience a new you. You’re traveling new territory, and you don’t even have to get on an airplane!

 

Writing As Meditation

Posted on by Kathryn Atkins

 

PICT2229.JPG
Rodin’s “Thinker”

I recently re-started meditating and I now believe that writing counts as meditation. Some people might disagree, but I feel that when you are truly on the page, paused waiting for the next word to come, or lingering while your character makes a decision, that moment is indeed a meditation. Cobble those moments together, and the result achieves a similar after-glow to a good meditation session.

There’s a quiet that infuses the heart. It’s a peacefulness of knowing you’re in the right place and that you are not anywhere else. That, to me, is meditation, and that, to me is the meditation of writing. Here’s the Merriam Webster definition:

 

med·i·tate

1: to engage in contemplation or reflection

2: to engage in mental exercise (as concentration on one’s breathing or repetition of a mantra) for the purpose of reaching a heightened level of spiritual awareness

That last phrase  is the sense of the word that applies to writing. Although some meditators would disagree that writing can be meditation, I would argue that we writers—when in the throes of creating prose—absolutely reach a heightened spiritual awareness.

It’s why I write.

On the other hand, a true meditative state invoked by breathing or repetition of a mantra, or other physical, psychic stillness, can create quite another type of spiritual awareness. There are levels, varieties, and indeed, nuances. Liken it to one of your favorite recipes: using the exact same ingredients, the end result may differ a tiny bit each time you make it, based on the freshness of the components, or the weather, or the occasion, and maybe even, the company. It’s not imperfectly different—it’s just different.

Some meditators I’ve studied actually allow the meditation of doing, the meditation of working, the meditation of exercise. I offer and support as witness, the meditation of writing. I submit that if you’re in the groove of your writing, and if you set your intention toward achieving that heightened awareness, writing is as restorative as any breathing meditation.

Some writing sessions produce Shakespeare; some barely reach Dick and Jane. We are not alone in this. Olympian wannabes break the record on a given day’s practice only to be barred from tryouts a week later. But, they continue to drill and train every day. Hopefully, we write every day. We meditate into our writing or we write into the spaces in our brain where the quiet places reside. It is peaceful there. Writing is meditation if you let it be, even on those awful Dick and Jane days.