The 1:1:1 April, 2021
On owning your unique genius, living deliberately, and the courageous wisdom of poetry.
Here’s the 1:1:1 —
1: Idea
“One of the most important things in life is discovering and living as our true self.
— Steven Morris, from The Odyssey of You
Before we can shape the life we want to live, we must listen to the whispers our life is quietly guiding us to become.
In a society that, for the most part, celebrates the sameness of fitting in, I invite your oddities to shine.
Your unique genius sits in the intersection of how you are uniquely made and what the world needs most from you.”
1: Inspiration
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
— Henry David Thoreau, “Walden“
1: Tool
Learning through Poetry
One of the things that I turn to for insight, wisdom, and practicing the art of slowing down is to read poetry.
The lens of the poet is in search of truths that we cannot discover when moving through life at a rapid pace. In today’s society slowing down takes courage. As the poet-philosopher David Whyte points out:
“Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.”
In honor of National Poetry Month (April) I’m sharing one of my most beloved poems by Derek Walcott:
LOVE AFTER LOVE
by Derek WalcottThe time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved youall your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
If you have insights on this, feel free to share them with me here.
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