We often find ourselves having to reinvent what’s important to us, and come to terms with dissatisfactions. Yet sometimes, our dissatisfaction is based on definitions we’ve created for concepts such as happiness, fulfillment, usefulness, connection that are definitions that no longer fit our situations.
What definitions do you have that might be based on old information and that might need some tweaking?
So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.
―Rainer Maria Rilke
How have you been transformed by a time of discontentment?
Nothing says “lovely, breezy summer day” like laundry fluttering out on the line. Iced over clothespins might seem pathetic, but they are also a reminder that the seasons can be counted on to change, and that we can trust that while our clothespins might seem pointless now, their time will come back around.
What do you treasure for its past and for its possibilities?
The monarch butterfly forms an elegant cocoon that looks like gold-trimmed jewelry. Inside, the tiny animal is in its least attractive form as it transforms from a pretty striped caterpillar to a lovely butterfly. Just because someone looks good doesn’t mean they aren’t wrestling inside.
What do you do to put on an attractive front when you are struggling?
Cocoanuts seem to be the latest fad food: cocoanut oil, cocoanut flour, cocoanut sugar, cocoanut water—it’s supposed to fight infection, fix your skin, cut your cholesterol and any number of other wonders. But to a cocoanut tree, its wondrous nuts are even more miraculous. They are a way of reaching the tree far out into the world, as the rolling, floating seeds move out to plant new trees.
How do you see your life purpose in a way that is different from how most people see you?
