According to physics, everything moves.

Slowing down helps us register the quality of our movements.

… Motions

When walking to our destination, we measure our progress by the distance we’ve traveled. If we stopped to recount and judge the quality of each step we took, it would become a major distraction that could compromise our trip.

Each step, when evaluated on its own, appears to be insignificant. It’s our combined steps, the ones we’ve taken and the ones we will continue to take, that best reflect our efforts.

… Steps

Everybody has a birthday. Not all of us are clear about our inheritance given to us at birth. And if the world had to distribute unclaimed gifts to the human population, the list would be longer than any well-intentioned foundation could manage.

… Birthright

The more contradictions I can hold, the more whole I feel as a person and the more honest I can live in relationship to the world around me.

As I push my boundaries of growth, my belief that things are either this or that has expanded to a capacity that can hold this and that. The “and” is the contradiction, but it is also the vehicle that leads to harmony.

… Contradictions

My childhood home caught on fire before I was born. Thankfully, nobody was injured, but the house and the things within it burned away. Although I wasn’t born until years later, every time I hear the story I can imagine the smell of the smoke and visualize the ashes that left behind the evidence of things that my family once depended on.

… Ashes

Let’s imagine that you go to workout with a friend. You notice that they picked up dumbbells at the beginning of their workout. Now, you’re walking home post-workout and they are still carrying the dumbbells. Eventually, they start complaining about how much their arms are hurting and you tell them to put down the weight. They look at you in disbelief and ask, “what weight?”

… Weight

A rule is a clearly understood regulation that governs conduct within a certain environment.

An environment that relies on rules to maintain peace, is at war.

An environment that has unspoken rules, compromises the peace.

An environment that maintains conduct without rules, is at peace.

Understanding the difference determines our ability to access the realms of love and peace, whose authentic presence does not depend on a single rule.

There is a segment of the population that go to hair salons and another segment of the population that go to beauty salons. Growing up, the people around me went to beauty salons. And for a long time I thought it was the place where a woman was awarded her beauty.

As a girl, I observed woman returning from day long trips to get beautiful, learned how beauty would be defined in my own life and anticipated the day that I would be permitted to take that trip.

Months ago, I chopped off 12 inches or more of my “beautiful” hair. It was unplanned, it was liberating, it happened in my own bathroom, with my own hands, using scissors that I owned for more than 10 years. And as I cut out every chemical that was ever put in my hair at a beauty salon, who I am, and what makes me beautiful, was redefined with every snip of my scissors.

This isn’t about my hair. Chemicals or no chemicals. It’s not even about beauty salons. It’s about a liberation into beauty. It’s about gaining back a portion of what I’ve given to the outside world. It’s about knowing that the only place I need to go to be awarded my beauty, is within myself.

Storing items inside of a drawer, for me, is a waste of good time and space. Once an item gets placed inside the closed container, it’s not very likely that it will see the light of day any time soon.

And while I have learned the truth about the drawer phenomenon in my physical world, I find myself still exploring it within in the realms of my inner environment.

If something precious to me unknowingly gets stored away in a drawer, it takes longer than I would like to reclaim it. And when I store things in a drawer that I no longer want or need, it becomes harder to filter between what I truly value and the things that should be released.

And yet, there is some relief that comes with being able to tuck something away in a drawer. But when does temporary storage become permanent storage? And how do we create enough capacity so that the things we really want in our lives can exist; outside the drawer?

“I don’t need anymore friends.” That used to be a commonly repeated phrase for me, and most people seemed to understand. And while it is good to know and respect our boundaries and limits, that comment was a statement that reflected my capacity at that point in my life.

My “no more friends” space made sense. At the time, I could not balance trying to internalize my own worth and maintain a meaningful connection to someone else. Especially someone who was “new” to my life. And the vulnerability that comes along with sharing yourself, seemed more like a threat to my survival than a companion.

As my capacity has grown, so has my connection to those around me. Fortunately, some of those connections have turned into meaningful friendships that I feel honored to have. And realizing that I am in choice about who I let in my life, makes my decisions feel like safe ones.

There are a lot of things that I don’t need more of, a good friend is not one of them.