The Best Advice I've Read Lately

And not a moment too soon.

Happy New Year!

And so we enter 2022. A third year asking us to wrap our minds around a landscape that does not, and likely will never, make sense. A world riddled with mysteries. Tension. Frustration. Hope. Aspects of life that were always there, but are now magnified.

Through shifting terrain, one thing consistently making it better — and I’m including you in this category — is friends. People. Voices, commiserative and supportive, cutting through the dusk at just the right moments.

Every January, in lieu of resolutions or sweeping calls for change, I like to choose a single word — a theme to meditate on and help give shape to my days. Some years, it’s a quality I want to cultivate (like “presence,” to foster awareness); other years, it might be a prompt for how I wish to live my days (like “enough,” to combat the productivity trap).

My word for 2022 is “collective.”

Collective wisdom. Collective effort. Collective knowledge. Collective good.

A nod to interconnectedness. An encouragement to check my ego, which has no place in working toward a common goal. A reminder not to stay siloed when there is so much benefit to be found in connection.

In one well-known Buddhist story, the Buddha was seated on a hillside, sharing a moment with his disciple, Ānanda. At one point, Ānanda, seeing the value of spending time with good, like-minded people, remarked, “Noble friends are half of the spiritual life.”

“No,” the Buddha replied, “Noble friends are the whole of this life.”

In challenging times, books have been some of my noblest friends, the places I turn when I need answers, or solace, or just company. And so, in the spirit of collective wisdom, here are some brief passages that have particularly affected me as of late. Perhaps they will resonate with you, too.

“We tell ourselves stories over and over and over again. We bewilder and frighten ourselves, forgetting that the dismay and the fear are always about what might have been or what might yet be but what isn’t happening now. We also forget that what’s happening now is not going to be happening for very long.”
— Sylvia Boorstein, It’s Easier Than You Think

“It would be many years before I began to understand that all of life is practice: writing, driving, hiking, brushing teeth, packing lunch boxes, making beds, cooking dinner, making love, walking dogs, even sleeping. We are always practicing. Only practicing.”
— Dani Shapiro, Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life

“The impulse frequently arises in me to squeeze another this or another that into this moment. Just this phone call, just stopping off here on my way there. Never mind that it might be in the opposite direction…I like to practice voluntary simplicity to counter such impulses and make sure nourishment comes at a deep level. It involves intentionally doing only one thing at a time and making sure I am here for it…I practice saying no to keep my life simple, and I find I never do it enough.”
— Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

“All of my teachers have had a great sense of humor and have valued humor as an important part of the spiritual path. It is a key part of being friendly to ourselves. Many of us go through our days haunted by our imperfection. We think there’s something fundamentally wrong with us… When we laugh at ourselves, on the other hand, all our terrible flaws become less solid and serious.”
— Pema Chödrön, Welcoming the Unwelcome

And wisdom from these voices, now quiet, whose words will move us forever:

“No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much.’ Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much.’ Considering the centuries of silence, the genres of writing that have been virtually the sole terrain of men, more contributions by women writers should be both encouraged and welcomed…No woman has written enough.”
— bell hooks, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work

“I realized that the truly awful thing about success is that it’s held up all those years as the thing that would make everything all right. And the only thing that makes things even slightly bearable is a friend who knows what you’re talking about.”
— Eve Babitz, Slow Days, Fast Company

"We are not idealized wild things. We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all."
— Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“Discovering more joy does not, I’m sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. Perhaps we are just more alive. Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters. We have hardship without becoming hard. We have heartbreak without being broken.”
— Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Book of Joy

If there are any words that you currently hold dear — quotes, book recommendations, New Year’s words, or anything at all — please feel free to share them in the comments. Thank you, as ever, for being part of this collective.

Wishing you a joyful, meaningful, and expansive year.

Card of the Week

Here is this week’s card for the collective, as well as some thoughts to carry into the days ahead. As most modern readers will tell you, the tarot is not about fortunetelling, nor is it about neat, definitive answers. The cards are simply one path to reflection, a way of better knowing ourselves and others through universal themes. If this reading resonates with you, great! And if not, no worries. Take whatever may be helpful and leave the rest.

Featuring the Pagan Otheworlds Tarot by Uusi

The Ace of Cups is a card about new beginnings — a very apt card to show up at the start of a new calendar cycle. Whether this one feels like a clean slate or a continuation of the same old story (or a little of both), the Ace of Cups reminds us that the opportunity for renewal is always available to us, regardless of the date.

Holidays, like traditions, can be beautiful, meaningful times. They can also be…arbitrary. Forced. Challenging. But the truth is, you can take any day and assign it any meaning you like. Time is just as precious in, say, April or August as it is during this first week of January. Your intentions carry weight in any season. Every time you wake up, you greet the possibility of a new beginning.

Traditionally, the Ace of Cups depicts a chalice with five streams of water pouring out of it, symbolizing the five senses. This card asks us to use our senses to the best of our abilities. Stay open. Pay attention. Take note.

The world around us, and our capacity to perceive it, is nothing less than a wonder. As Walt Whitman wrote, “As to me I know of nothing else but miracles.” Sometimes, it’s the simplest, most basic things that are the most miraculous. Sometimes, the greatest change we can make isn’t about improvement at all, but about tiny shifts in perception.

The element of water, so present on this card, is a perfect example of an everyday miracle. It makes up 71% of the Earth’s surface. It comprises roughly 60% of the adult human body. It’s all around us — in plants and animals and clouds and even, remarkably, coming out of your tap. In many traditions, water is also seen as sacred, an integral part of rituals for cleansing and rebirth. For something so essential, how often do we stop and consider this?

It is a human tendency to quantify, to classify, to label. We want to know when something will happen. How long it will take. How it will feel. We observe a situation and immediately judge it as positive or negative, good or bad, comfortable or scary. But these labels are limited at best. As is our understanding.

Through our observations, we can begin to see the world — even the mundane, disappointing, heartbreaking parts — with awe.

Sure, the calendar refreshes itself at the beginning of January. But the Ace of Cups reminds us that all the pressure we put around this time is wholly unnecessary. Renewal is a natural, and inevitable, part of life. We are all reborn each day. We are always allowed to start over — to refine our approach, our beliefs, our thinking. To see the same old things in a new and different way.

In the days ahead, let your senses drink up what the world has to offer, allowing yourself to find the awe in simple moments. Awe, like its cousin wonder, keeps us open to possibilities. Awe helps ground us in the present moment. Awe shows us how even the mundane can be magical.

May such moments sustain you. May they heal you. May they carry you forward.

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