Tian Dayton

If I hurt, today I can own it and if I am afraid, I can admit rather than hide it. Experiencing my own fear can make me so anxious that I try to pretend it isn’t there. This is when I look for crutches to hold me up. Owning my own fear actually gives me strength. It allows me not to be caught off guard or get overly triggered by whatever frightens me.
When I know I am afraid, I have a stronger psychological position than when I deny that part of myself.

It’s okay for me to be afraid.

[We] frame the situation in such a way that we can once again open ourselves to new possibilities of response to suffering. They can turn our attention to an examination of the reactions that suffering triggers off in us. Up to now these reactions have been rooted not only in fear but in the denial of fear. Merely to be mindful of this pattern is to be
one step closer to our own truth and, in turn, to the truth of someone else’s suffering. Truth is where we will meet. Simply acknowledging our reactiveness to pain, therefore, is itself an initial act of service.
Ram Dass and Paul Gorman from “How Can I Help?”

Today I will do what is in front of me. Rather than make my plan for the day on a formless future, I will do that task which is nearest to my hand. I cannot live in days that have not happened yet. Hard as I try, I cannot put my boots on and take a walk through the future. Life unfolds as it is meant to, and the life that I lead is subject to the laws of
time. Time is actually a wonderful caring principle that gives me my life in manageable doses. To understand and experience the depth of the moment – to taste the sweet that is in my hand – that is living. The rest will be provided for.

I perform the task in front of me.

Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, Which thou knowest to be a Duty!
Thy Second Duty will already have become clearer…
Thomas Carlyle

In my quiet moments I allow myself to fully entertain my own thoughts. I learn and grow in layers. When I have come finally to decode what feels like garbled data and to understand more clearly what I am seeing, feeling and hearing, then I am ready to move through another layer. Some days, learning how to live feels like too hard a struggle, but then I consider the alternatives – living a hollow and meaningless life, wasting or even resenting life, living stupidly and blundering mindlessly along, living only on the surface, never letting anything or anyone really touch or move me is certainly no easier. When I consider the alternatives, it puts the struggle in perspective; I understand why I carry on.

The struggle is worthwhile.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.
Marcel Proust

Today I know that what I accumulate in my life is of no account if I lose my spirit, my self, my soul. I can enjoy the things of the world when I see them for what they are and do not ask them to be more than they are or to give me what they cannot give. They are meant to enhance my pleasure, not to be the source of it. It is my knowledge and awareness of that part of me which is infinite that is my true source of peace, pleasure, happiness and serenity. When I am in full possession of this inner self, which is also connected to the universal self, then I am in a position to take pleasure in the world around me.

I am that which never dies.

We brought nothing into this world. And it is certain we carry nothing out of it.
1 Timothy 6:7

I am not an island onto myself. Isolating myself from those I am intimate with is impossible. All I accomplish through this self-imposed separation is the illusion of isolation. I share space with those who are close to me. Each of us knows what is going on, each of us feels the atmosphere of the other. I will be willing to know how I affect people today on both a verbal and, even more important, on a nonverbal level. I will take responsibility not only for what I say, but for who I am in the alive and vibrating feeling atmosphere around me. The atmosphere around me is alive and carries my silent message to all whom I encounter; it is what others I am in relationship with know and live with.

I own what I think and feel.

Now if you apply the wave-particle metaphor to human relationship and think that we are both particle, individuals in our own space and time and waves, things that can overlap and combine with others, then you have a basis for seeing how we could get “into” relationships with other people.
Dianne Zohar