On Understanding and Finding Your Flow

Happy new year, you! Wherever you are, I hope this year ushers in a host of little lovelies, whether you can see them immediately or not. I also hope you on your part find a way to fill this year with wonder, memorable moments, and love.

Winter flowers on the Highline

I could say lots more, but I'm going to let Ms Popova from Brainpickings help me with that today. In response to (and in support of) Greek philosopher Philo's maxim: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is carrying a great burden", she quotes an extract from surgeon Sherwin Nuland's conversation with radio show host Krista Tippett,

"When you recognize that pain – and response to pain – is a universal thing, it helps explain so many things about others, just as it explains so much about yourself. It teaches you forbearance. It teaches you a moderation in your responses to other people's behavior. It teaches you a sort of understanding. It essentially tells you what everybody needs. You know what everybody needs? You want to put it in a single word?  

Everybody needs to be understood.  

And out of that comes every form of love.  

If someone truly feels that you understand them, an awful lot of neurotic behavior just disappears – disappears on your part, disappears on their part. So if you're talking about what motivates this world to continue existing as a community, you've got to talk about love... And my argument is it comes out of your biology because on some level we understand all of this. We put it into religious forms. It's almost like an excuse to deny our biology. We put it into pithy, sententious aphorisms, but it's really coming out of our deepest physiological nature."

Perhaps this is the greatest message of all. Be kind. Show some understanding. The ocean of life is so expansive; sometimes you're ebbing peacefully into clear skies, sometimes you're being tossed into the eye of a storm. (Though you know what they say about the eye of the storm) You just have to roll with it. Watch the waves go by. And dive into them when the time is right.

In other words, you have to find your flow. Find it, make it, melt into it.

That way, by the time you reach the shore, you are at peace with the wave that brought you there.

Have a good one, everyone!