How do we present ourselves in a world riddled with quick judgements and assumptions?
For a good while I have been working on finding a very few phrases to keep me steady and grounded in Who I am. These are actually the same phrases which I tend to close out my posts with, but they have been an evolution.
At first, the phrase Love Abounds was huge for me. Being able to see that love was by its very nature abundant and giving, pouring forth without bounds, was a beautiful way to keep me aligned with seeing the good in the world.
Love Abounds over time morphed into Stay Wild. As I began to explore myself and my environment deeper, I recognized that we humans pull ourselves out of nature and our natural lives in order to surround ourselves with convenient commodity.
Recently, Stay Wild has begun to evolve as well. The word wild feels to me like a sort of spectral reflection of a natural sweetness or tameness. An innate wildness, connecting us with the dualistic qualities seen in nature. Like a mother tiger tenderly bringing home fresh kills for her cubs, the idea of sweet but powerful self-sufficiency rings true for me with the phrase stay wild.
But now I’ve come to the idea of humility. In terms of humanistic description and general definition, humble indicates something that is perhaps more meager or lower than other counterparts. Maybe it was rooted as an adjective for the working class, who would submit their own hard earnings to their liege lord. However, humility as a service to others can be a great gift.
So often we become so deeply caught in the many nets of personal work, home, and play that we lose sight of the greater world around us. There is a beautiful saying,
“Being humble does not mean thinking less of yourself, it means thinking of yourself less.”
Recently, this has been speaking to me a lot. I recognize that when I am shining my brightest it is when I am bringing joy to others. Spending less time working on personally motivated goals, wants, needs and moving my energy towards sustaining others is really what brings me joy.
When I was younger, all my many claimed career goals had just one thing in common: service to others. Whether it was owning an animal rescue or becoming a veterinarian, an inventor, or a counselor, I wanted to help make the world a better place by raising others up. Helping them through their problems towards a greater goal.
My dad told me a story yesterday about a construction worker who had to get these heavy machines to crawl over a curb without damaging the area. Someone mentioned to the worker, “Uh-oh, looks like you have a problem.” To which the worker replied, “This is my life, I don’t have problems, I deal with situations”.
This clicked with me as a humble way to work. He was not taking this as a personal problem and negating his day because of it, he was recognizing that this was just another moment in the cycle of experiences, and he will work with the situation at hand regardless of perceived difficulty.
Before, I was abundant love and sweetness. Pouring out positive vibes regardless of the situation. (And might I add that this is NOT always a good way to approach situations as it is definitely blinded to the shadowed aspects which equally need our attention). As the negative world news became overpowering, I turned to wildness to keep me strong. However, I’ve found that immersive rewilding can sometimes keep us distant from the very things we are hoping to change.
Now as I am cycling back in my understanding and my viewpoints, I recognize that I seek to walk with a humble sweetness. I hope to share this with others as I encounter them, bringing them to a deeper understanding that we are all part of a larger system. We are all humble counterparts to this complex world. We can come together as communities to work through situations without feeling like we are being personally handed a world of problems.
A splendid author Charles De Lint wrote:
“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic -- the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we're alone.”
If we lose sight of the magic in the world, the sweetness that springs from natural wonders and births, we can become self-involved, governing, and even cynical. When our egos take control, we lose sight of the connective tissue that lies between us all: the desire of all beings to sustain the things which bring them love and happiness. If we can practice humility, we might recognize more of the things we share than the things which separate us. This practice cultivates kindness.
I’ll close this out with another great quote from the humble Cinderella:
“Where there is kindness, there is goodness and where there is goodness, there is magic.”
Till next time my friends,
be sweet, stay wild, stay humble, and don’t forget, love abounds!
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