Perhaps within each of us there is an awkward little animal that periodically pokes up its head and wonders whether it feels ready to leave the safe, if claustrophobic, burrow that it has been hiding in. Sometimes just a shadow is enough to scare it back underground, but spring always comes eventually.
What would it take for your inner groundhog to believe that it’s safe to come out?
Even in hard times, there are moments when we get a slight fizzing in the blood, joy bubbling up from wherever it is that joy resides. The trick is to keep watch for those moments of lightness, and to allow ourselves to be lifted.
What joy—however tiny—is bubbling up in you?
You can prepare. You can contemplate. You can weigh options, and list pros and cons. You can do a cost/benefit analysis. But if you’re on the end of the high dive, at some point you have to jump.
What do you dream of leaping toward?
Be like the bird who, pausing in her flight awhile on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, and yet sings, knowing she hath wings.
—Victor Hugo
What gives you a sense of security that allows you rest in precarious places?
Why is it that we frequently “take time,” but we never “give time”? We only say, in the negative, that someone wouldn’t give us the time of day. Take your time, certainly, but why not try giving some as well?
Who will you give time to today?
