I need to keep reminding myself to find comfort in the moment. I have to keep nurturing my system to make it feel safe, rested and nourished. It makes me weep when I see suffering, I need to keep building a resilient system, for the long haul.
People often remark how political I am, but I am not in the way that they mean. I don’t believe in an ideology. I could never march under a flag. I have no religion. I don’t wish to prostrate myself to a higher being. I can see the comfort that people take in their religion and their rituals, it just isn’t my thing. I have no allegiance to one political party, I vote for values that are aligned with mine. I don’t want to be part of one side. Surety frightens me. I don’t trust anyone who cannot examine, self-reflect or have empathy for others.
I see all sides of the argument. Unless of course your belief is that your people are superior to another people. In which case, we can’t be friends.
I believe in liberty, equality and peace for all humans to live to their fullest potential, and for all sentient beings, the Earth and the natural world to be respected.
I know…even I roll my eyes at my hippy-dippy-ness.
I’m telling you all of this because I also don’t believe in many spiritual writings. I find them too passive or submissive. Indeed, far too many spiritual groups and leaders have been involved in covering up abuse, misogyny and enforcing unfair systems or reinforcing lazy tropes, so I find it tricky to quote them in class.
I cannot tell you what a pain in the arse it is to be so questioning. My life as a teacher in the wellness world could be so much easier if I quoted nice sounding quotes from so-called spiritual leaders. They seemingly say profound things but some of them, it transpires, are not very nice human beings.
So what does comfort me? Communicating from the heart. Be it writers, painters, musicians, poets, actors, photographers, teachers and anyone who feels their feelings and allows themselves to be vulnerable enough to put it out there.
Binkie sent me a poem the other day. It was such a sweet thing to do and it comforted me in the moment. It gave me an idea for today’s post, to share with you comforting words, in this instance from Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant book: Hope in the Dark which I carry around with me and dip into when my mind starts drowning in the darkness.
“Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognise uncertainty, you recognise that you may be able to influence the outcomes – you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and knowable, a alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.” ― Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
Isn’t this powerful? It also speaks to the idea that you don’t take action just for yourself ( as the modern incarnations of ancient practices would have you believe) but you have a belief in the greater good and are not attached to the glory of the outcome.
So, dear reader, tell me…what has been comforting you? Please send a photo, type it out or send it in whatever format is easy for you. Let’s build a library of collective comfort that we can dip into whenever we need it.
I’ll drop a lesson for paid subscribers here over the weekend.
Thank you for being here.
Stay human,
Nahid x