I read this morning Rick Hanson’s beautiful newsletter “Just One Thing” – a year’s worth of weekly practices to help us grow in happiness, love and wisdom.
This piece was about “Seeing Progress,” and it was a balm for my soul – just what the doctored ordered. I woke up feeling particularly hard on myself for the mistakes I’ve made these past years, and the harder I was on myself, the worse I felt. I came to my computer, and saw Rick’s email, and it stopped me in my (self-flagellating) tracks.
He helped me remember that, in small ways, our world is getting better, my world is getting better. We are making progress, improving ourselves, helping others, making change, finding solutions, addressing problems. It’s not all “doom and gloom” and “dark times,” as the media and so many in the world would like us to believe.
I feel so much better, remembering that progress is being made. Here’s Rick’s beautiful piece below – I hope it helps you as it did me, and encourages you to see all that’s improving and shifting in your life.
Let’s overcome our “learned helplessness,” and strengthen our resilience by remembering to see what is improving.
Towards that end, I decided that today (stuck here in the snow) I’d begin reading something nourishing and uplifting, and I chose A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson. My dear friend Susie Horgan recommended it to me. I had picked it up years ago, but never opened it, and there it lay on my shelf.
I opened the book to find this:
“Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment – or unlearning—of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.”
Ah…I’m going to love this book and this day.
