Hello loves!
My goodness - happy September! We are here now. We are breathing.
First of all, an enormous thank you to handful of you that responded to the survey I sent in the August letter. Your feedback is incredibly helpful and, most specially for me, your words of encouragement. It’s so interesting how confidence is tested in this way; I procrastinated for days on checking the results because of fear: that no one responded; that the feedback would totally change what I had planned; that for the “What can I do better?” question, I’d have to swallow criticism that I asked for. Instead, the responses were only positive and encouraging, from “you’re doing beautifully” and “continue being you” to “continue [writing these] in whatever fashion is most giving you life…an audience will follow”. I read these and wept. Thank you, thank you dear loves. Dear friends.
In other results:
There was a smattering of interest in the different sections of the love letter with 100% of friends choosing personal stories (so fun for me!)
For the practice section, 100% of friends selected writing/journaling prompts and 67% selected meditation/breath work recordings, so I will focus on those.
100% of friends said “yes” to a live monthly yoga for stress relief workshop (special thanks to Hilary for asking me not to overextend myself and do only what I am called to <3 ). I am marinating on this and looking forward to announcing something in the near future!
And the random winner of the 1 hour private practice session with me is…. SAMAR! Stay tuned for an email dear friend (or let’s be honest you’ve already gotten a weird text). Option to donate this session to a friend who could use it.
(P.S. If you meant to respond to the survey and didn’t get a chance (I also didn’t send reminders) - no worries!! You can ALWAYS tell me things - simply leave a comment or hit reply to this email. I am a human on the other side of this screen :) ).
Harvesting Luminous Gifts
I’m no climate change expert (where you at Amy!), but it certainly feels like the autumn equinox is more than a mere three weeks away. It’s hot and sticky in DC, there are perpetual summer thunderstorms in New England, and it’s sunny and dry in California. Obviously, different regions experience the seasons differently, and it’s been so interesting to spend this time in a place like California where the weather stays more consistent than I’ve known.
But over the last week of August, there were still signs: the cool morning and evening air, the active squirrels, the rush at the farmer’s market for the freshest final tomatoes. Mary Oliver calls summer the season of “luminous gifts”, and fall that of “exquisite diminishing”. First of all, how freakin’ beautiful are those frameworks? They help me each time appreciate both what is here now and what is coming. Her works remind me constantly that change is normal, that change is always coming, that nature - both our external and internal worlds - function most heathfully in seasons. In cycles. We are in this perpetual circle and it is simply our job to notice and appreciate. To surrender instead of resist.
Our monthly poem above, though perhaps written in winter, reminds me of this time here and now - the harvest: “to love what is lovely, and will not last!” It will not last dear ones, and that’s all right. It’s alright. The tomatoes will turn mealy first, then rot. The air will keep cooling. The beach days are numbered. It’s all completely natural (well, sort of).
And it’s a reminder that there’s no guarantee. If there’s anything we’ve all learned from COVID, I truly hope it is that. Despite precautions, there’s no guarantee I never contract the virus myself. There’s no guarantee despite my health that I don’t get direly sick. There is no guarantee I don’t lose someone I love to this or another threat. It is heavy, but what eases the pain is being here, and now. We can’t always live like there’s no tomorrow, but may we strive to celebrate the present (within budget ;) ). So splurge on the $4.99/pound heirlooms if you’re obsessed with peak tomatoes. Call your mom. Buy the massage appointment. Get off the couch and go for a stroll outside.
And most importantly, as goes my favorite quote from the novel “All the Light We Cannot See”: “open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
On Love & Force
I’ve been thinking a lot about force lately. Perhaps it’s all the forcing of activity I default to when stressed. Perhaps it’s all the news about Afghantistan and hurricanes. There’s something about the word “force” that feels, I don’t know, mean.
But stripped of context, force is simply a building block of our existence. According to physics:
A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object's interaction with another object. Whenever there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force upon each of the objects. When the interaction ceases, the two objects no longer experience the force. Forces only exist as a result of an interaction.
I’m at a beginner level, so forgive any following misunderstanding (*The references here are from a single source), but I love that last part. Force can only be present in an interaction, which means at least two things must be present. A foot hits a soccer ball, and the ball moves. The interaction between the foot and the ball results in a pushing force. A hand pulls on a door, and the door opens - a pulling force (both examples are contact forces). Gravity pulls things down and magnetic fields pull towards each other (action-at-a-distance force).
Let’s assume for our purposes we each experience two opposing forces simultaneously: love and fear. You could also name these good and evil, benevolence and malevolence, light and dark, right and wrong, Creator and Destroyey, God and the Devil - you do you. I prefer the first set of words, so I’ll go with those.
Quick recap on my favorite definitions of these words *from my research thus far:
Love: “the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” (“All About Love” by bell hooks).
Fear: the ego trying to protect itself (“Dave”, S2 ep9. Sidenote: this episode is fucking brilliant at depicting the ego, which is not something to deny but develop a relationship with).
If they are equal (and opposite), then nothing happens. If the same amount of love is pulling/pushing on you as is an equal amount of fear, you are stuck in place. You are in perfect balance (yay!), but it doesn’t appear like you can do anything.
Now, here’s the part that I love:
Other situations could be imagined in which two of the individual vector forces cancel each other ("balance"), yet a third individual force exists that is not balanced by another force. For example, imagine a book sliding across the rough surface of a table from left to right. The downward force of gravity and the upward force of the table supporting the book act in opposite directions and thus balance each other.
However, the force of friction acts leftwards, and there is no rightward force to balance it. In this case, an unbalanced force acts upon the book to change its state of motion.
A perfect balance would result in a null result unless there is a third thing, an unbalanced force to incite motion.
Conceptualized into human behavior for our purposes, this means that this is where CHOICE comes in. You could slide the book left or right. You could choose love or fear. Yes, two opposing forces pull/push on you simultaneously, but if you introduce a third thing, a choice, then you can change the motion, or the direction. Which direction you choose, which type of action you choose, affects the result.
This is where our definition of love as a verb comes in, as ACTION. If both love and fear are weighing on you equally, and let’s assume all actions can be distilled to a base of love or fear, then you must choose one of those things to get moving. Fear pushes you in one direction, love in the other.
*
I’ve had a grand lesson in force and choice this past month, particularly as I write this letter during the last week of August (my birthday week!). I’m sitting on the back deck of a California home that feels like a paradise nature artist retreat and looks like someone did a reallyyyy good job on an indie Cali movie set. This stay is a gift from my dear friend Mackenzie, who if I could sum up, which I cannot, is like if the sun and the moon made sweet love and had a 100-year-old wise child. It was the destination of my very illuminating three-day long train trip across the country, which you can read all about here in my Notes on a Cross-Country Train doc (there is a Too Long Didn’t Read (TLDR) section; scroll to end for my long form poem).
Mackenzie and I had five glorious days and nights, the longest time we’ve spent together since high school 15 years ago. We’ve always been on opposite coasts and have never visited each other until now. And the entire five days, Mackenzie was not only my dearest friend but my wisest teacher. A true meditative practitioner, each day with Mackenzie is fluid and intuitive. If she is tired, she rests. If she wants to get in the pool, she dives in regardless of temperature. If she needs to move her body, she cheerfully laces up her sneakers and heads out the door to the hiking trails at the end of the street. If she wants a sip of wine, she takes one. If she doesn’t, she doesn’t.
It sounds ridiculous to say this blew my mind, but I was in awe. It was all so… natural. So her. I found myself turning inward and seeing what I needed, what I wanted. And instead of second-guessing or forcing, I simply accepted what appeared.
This is new for me. Typically, I force. Or rather, the winning force of choice is typically fear.
I force conversations, I force errands and menial tasks that are totally unnecessary (at least for the moment), I force my piriformis into warrior 3 pose despite the burning sensation (I’m tryna tone this bum!), I force a super heavy backpack on my shouders despite the nerve pain I still feel in my vaccinated arm. I force another episode of the Sopranos when I know damn well I’ve already started yawning and it’s time for reading in bed. I’ve forced sex, relationships, texts, decisions, goals, schedules, plans. I force a late-nighter finishing up this love letter after avoiding it for days.
Force, force, force. Fear, fear, fear.
But were these things predetermined? NO. I made choices every single step of the way. I chose to take my big backpack instead of the smaller one. I chose that yoga sequence. I chose to numb painful feelings instead of have a real (difficult) conversation.
It’s not fun, all this responsibility. But the consequences of fear-based choice aren’t fun either. It’s not like my arm feels better after traveling with 30 pounds on my back. It’s not like that conversation went as well as it could have if I just took a breath and addressed issues in real-time (oh, conflict!). It wasn’t good sex, the relationship was a failure, my piriformis still hurts. What it all has in common is inauthenticity, which once you become aware of it, starts to hurt.
As comedian Bobby Lee says in his podcast, “My only purpose in life is to be my authentic self.”
And if Mackenzie embodies one thing (she doesn’t), it would be authenticity. She is wholly herself, and her life has thus unfolded in a natural way. Not easy, but with ease.
Per usual, I wanted a secret shortcut, so I grilled her.
“What do you do at night?” (I pointed out the TV in the living room she didn’t notice was there);
“How do you spend your days?” (she meditates not in lotus but in action - guiding her day on instinct);
“What if things get in the way?” (a laugh, “I just accept that’s the day I’m having”);
“Are you a morning person?” (it depends);
“Are you vegan?” (mostly, save for exquisite cheese and salmon nigri);
“Are you still sober?” (there is no always/never construct).
In sum, she relies on choice, and trusts those choices because she knows they are in concert with her self.
And how did she get to this place? In a word, meditation. And commitment to practice. That last part is the most difficult thing, but once you get used to staying still through discomfort, once the fog of rotating thoughts and feelings clears, you start to see the blue sky, as it were, even if it’s just for a few seconds. Headspace meditation teacher Andy calls it the place of “quiet confidence”. The place where you are in and of yourself. Home.
What if we spent more time in this place?
What if we deeply trusted our choices?
What if we let our need for nourishment, for our soul-self guide us instead of fear?
What if CHOOSING LOVE tipped the scales, was the imbalance, the third force!?
We are responsible for our choices.
May the force be with us.
P.S. I’ve used words like responsibility and trust in this essay, which are two of the six pillars of love according to bell & fellow scholars. I trust I will explore these concepts in-depth in due time. Stay tuned :)
Practice
My daily personal practice of choice right now is: morning pages, Headspace’s self-esteem meditation package (sup clear confidence!), and moving my body, all preferably outdoors in the fresh air.
Some options for you this month:
1) Go outside. Choose outside. Be outside. YES YES YESSSS WE LOVE IT OUTSIDE IT WILL BE COLD BEFORE YOU KNOW IT CHOOSE OUTTTTSIDEEEE! We may not always or ever have access to regal beaches or butterfly havens, but nature is right outside! Our bodies love it. It is an act of love. (and it will not last).
Bonus: can you not force it? (e.g. trust your instinct on what to choose, whether it’s simply standing in an open doorway for a few moments, sitting on a bench or balcony, laying in a sunny spot like a bunny, or going for that sweaty hike or run)
Double bonus: can you do this every day this month? what accountability tool would help? (e.g. a buddy, a paper or digital tracker of some kind (I like to draw a circle for each day and fill it in)).
2) Write about what you notice. What did you notice in your environment? What are the trees up to? Any random treasures spotted? What did you choose to do? How did you feel making these choices? Sticking to them?
Loving Lately
Hiking! My goodness it’s been a minute (or 3 years? lolz) since I did any real cardio - my lungs heave and my thighs burn, but it feels so fucking good to sweat, to climb, to reap the rewards of hard work with a view. Thank you to my bubsy for sharing this passion with me, and thank you for always going slow for me :)
Editing my sub-collection of fall poems for my next book, which are due to my mentor at the end of September! P.S. My first collection “Alias All” is now available online for purchase!!
Also:
Watching the season finale of “Dave” (FX, Hulu) on repeat and Netflix’s new series “The Chair” starring Sandra Oh. Next on my list: Season 2 of “Lupin” and Season 7 of “Grace & Frankie”
Reading “Dr. Zhivago” by Boris Pasternak
Listening to this slow burn jam by Paolo Nutini, which features a famous speech Charlie Chaplin gave in his film “The Great Dictator” (1940) - adding that to the list!
Phew, enough from me. How are you doing love? Tell us below!
How can I better support you? Simply hit reply to this email.
As always, thank you, thank you for reading.
Sending lots of love to you and yours,
xColby