Sunday, March 11, 2012

What Boat Do You Need to Burn?

 Some rights reserved by eimaj photos
The amazing Danielle LaPorte has offered up this intriguing question as part of her Burning Question Series

What boat do you need to burn?

Danielle writes:

There’s a story my friend Pasha told me about about a mythic band of magic-loving Irish folk. Feeling the call for newness, they would forge out to settle on a new island. Necessarily, they would make the journey by ship. When they arrived to their next land they would unpack — and then promptly burn their boats.

No desire to go back. Focused forward. New journey, new way of getting there, new results.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Bodies and Beings

AttributionShare Alike Some rights reserved by Tibei Chingiz
Lots of thoughts jumbling around in my head these past few weeks, and, of course, I've been so busy that I haven't had time to write.

It's interesting how certain discussion clouds will float around me...sometimes, people are talking about politics a lot, and I notice...and sometimes they're talking about ethics a lot, and I notice...or fashion, or pop culture, or whatever.

Lately, people have been talking about bodies, and about aging, and about self worth, and I'm noticing. I have a ton to say on this topic and not a lot of time to write...and that's maddening.

In short, I'm feeling a multitude of things:

1. We are the physical and the spiritual, so the aging process is happening to the whole of our being. It's not like the aging process is that of a young being trapped inside an old shoe or something. The totality of our nature changes over time.

2. At the same time, I recognize that it can be scary to know that it will never be the way it was before, whatever your "it" happens to be. In the case of aging, the "it" is a body; in the case of a being, "it" is self perception.

3. I really resonate with this post from the awesome blog Eat the Damn Cake. I was especially moved by this paragraph:  

"I keep getting the impression that getting older successfully means looking like you’re not getting much older. Which usually means fighting a desperate, constant, losing battle against biology. From a distance, it looks a lot like having a terminal illness. And in a way, I guess it is. You fight every day, putting yourself through painful procedures and grueling exercise regimens, and then, eventually, the things you’ve been staving off overwhelm your body. And that is that."

Kate says, after this paragraph, that she doesn't want to "waste her time". I also don't want to waste my time on this sort of stuff...and yet, there must be a happy medium, a place where maintenance of my being (in it's totality) is healthy and not obsession.

So yes, my thoughts, in bits, without a coherent thesis.