I have been on crutches for over two months now from a serious knee injury I have mentioned in previous posts. Ten days ago I was given the green light from my doctor to ditch the crutches and begin weight-bearing around the house. Sadly, after 3 days the pain returned. Instantly I went from hope to a state of despair. How much longer will I have to endure this?
By “chance” I tuned into an episode of the OnBeing podcast called the “Future of Hope” an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, who happens to be one of my heroes. During the interview by Pico Iyer, Gilbert speaks of how she navigated the pandemic and also the death of her life partner, Rayya from cancer. Here are two excerpts from that interview which I needed to hear…
“if there is one thing that I, if I had the chance to do it over again, could’ve done differently, would’ve been to walk into it in a stance of surrender — arms collapsed, no clipboard, no agenda, no cherished outcome — and to have almost gone limp into it, which is not the same thing as hopelessness, but it is a very powerful stance to take in the wake of something that is bigger than you are.”
“And a friend of mine gave me a tip: to lower my standards of gratitude, to lower the bar and to catch the low-hanging fruit so that it’s not — it doesn’t have to be these huge, epic, grandiose gratitudes. The more physical they are, the more I felt it in my body. My gratitude for these slippers that I have that have an insole that you can put in the microwave and you can warm up your feet, that’s on my gratitude list almost every day. And I feel it neurologically. Even when I say it, I remember how comfortable those slippers feel, and remembering that doesn’t necessarily send me into despair over the state of the world, and it starts to kind of rewire my brain.”
Such good advice in tough times be it a pandemic, death of a loved one, or an injured knee.
Surrender
Gratitude
Every day I have to relearn those lessons.
I highly recommend listening to this episode.
Fred Rogers often told this story about when he was a boy and would see scary things on the news: “My mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.”
This is a reblog of a poem I wrote for New Year’s Eve last year when my blog was brand new and had few readers. I read it at a gathering of friends. We were all still reeling from the presidential election fallout. As the poem as it was read caused a hush in the room. Later, several friends told me how much it meant to them. Feel free to share this at your gathering on this New Year’s Eve as we hope for change in 2018. What better way to start the New Year than with poetry?
No matter how much the terrorists, the despots, (& our president) try to steal the show, nature wins hands down. What a magnificent sight it was to gaze up at the sky & witness such a celestial event among friends. It was a great morning in 
Oregon!
Some of my favorite art is the cave paintings from Paleolithic times or the rock paintings from ancient Native Americans & Australian Aborigines. There is an ongoing debate about the purpose of this primitive type of art. I believe it was about story telling or merely leaving evidence of their existence, much like tracks. These images were made to be viewed by other people. A simple hand print on a wall is powerful. It says “I was here.”
By Alanna Pass 