If it’s important to remember our childhood darkness, trauma, or pain, then it’s even more important to remember our joy, because joy is our natural state, the original spirit and foundation of our very existence. If we cling to our pain, that pain becomes our identity. If our pain seems a greater, more powerful force than joy, then we need to work harder at remembering our own joy, however small […]
What grew in me without my knowing, what crept stealthily into my burgeoning little boy’s identity and went unrecognized for years, was a keen sense of competition. The expectation, need, and desire to be the best was administered in tiny doses without their knowing by family, friends, acquaintances, and teachers. The best reader, the best speller, the best runner, the best at throwing or kicking a ball — the process […]
Once I realized I would live forever, I forgot all about it. Truth be told, if in my life there’s a common theme, it’s that almost without exception, whatever flash of insight I have, or feel I have, I forget within a day or two. And so it might be said that my present understanding is an accumulation of inspired residue dating back to childhood, those tiny bits which, against […]
The storm’s over, the sun’s returned, and you’re the last snowflake to fall. When you land, the other snowflakes are already melting. And you think, In another life, I might have been rain. * Your eyes, looking back at you in wonder from the still water of a shimmering pond, and you, not noticing, as you comb your hair in front of the mirror. * I, me, mine — we […]
On one hand, there’s discomfort, which tells me something’s wrong, or isn’t fully healed. On the other, there’s fear the discomfort will grow worse, or won’t end. But fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy. What I fear is intensified and prolonged by my fear. If I fear long enough, I will fear until my death. And if my fear is the fear of death, I will die fearing that. In this […]
What trouble, illness, pain, or difficulty isn’t worsened, magnified, intensified, by thought? Your next image, word, sentence, paragraph — can you replace it with a thought-free breath? . [ 1622 ]
Ask the body — Is there a difference between the fear of pain, the fear of rejection, the fear of poverty, the fear of loss, the fear of death? . [ 1597 ]
A terrible thought — to be buried with your guilt and pain. But glad there’s none in the grave — somehow you know it’s bad for the soil. Roots and bones — and now fall’s moving in. Wake up, friend! . [ 1545 ]
Health, leisure, good fortune, and very modest means. Blueberries, and other transitory things. No desire to possess or own. Catkins and birch-bits. Sunflowers. Bees. Cucumbers. The spider in my hair, taken back outside. Aware — yes, aware — there are troubles in the world. Hunger. Suffering. Violence. Greed. Pain. Wildfire. Drought. Climate change. The poses we assume. The lies we tell. The games we play. Aware — yes, aware — […]
Cloudy, calm, sixty-one degrees. Twice during this morning’s run, I was met with the scent of star jasmine, and once with that of a cigarette. Then someone, perhaps unable to bear the dark and the quiet, or the idea of facing another day of meaningless, underpaid drudgery, set off a loud firework somewhere to the east. The silence, though, didn’t mind; it held the noise close until it died in […]
William Michaelian 