Sunday walk

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Yesterday afternoon, I set out solo in the sunshine. I love the people in my house and I love my house; yet the need to escape was powerful. To move.

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On the busier sections of path, snippets of conversation floated past:

“The single-best way to leave a legacy, guaranteed, is to have a lot of children—” (Spoken by one young man to another, both wearing sunglasses, coming toward me on the trail.)

“Actually, I had a bit of a set-back this week. My tennis friend called and said ‘I have bad news….'” (Two women crossing my path diagonally.)

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The sun was so warm, I took off my scarf and hat, unzipped my jacket.

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On the quiet stretches of path, I told myself stories about who I wanted to be, who I remembered being. Who knows what a calling is anyway? I miss interacting with people. I miss working with students, I miss coaching. I said this out loud, so I could really hear it.

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I listened to an On Being podcast three times yesterday, while mixing and kneading bread dough, doing laundry, searing a small roast, chopping veggies (though not while out walking): Krista Tippett’s conversation with Ariel Burger. I listened and listened and listened, trying to absorb the wisdom.

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Do not let anyone be humiliated in your presence.

It sounds very basic: a recipe for being a witness, not a spectator.

I wondered what to do if the person being humiliated was yourself; what then? (The podcast does not discuss power.) I see people who are hurt and wounded by their interactions with systems designed to crush and humiliate them, hurt by people acting within those systems, and I think: what protection is there against this cruelty, injustice? We are asking too much of individuals to fight for themselves, by themselves.

Maybe that’s the power of witness? If you can, if you are able, be a witness, a true witness, and do not let anyone be humiliated in your presence.

Be a blessing.

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Be a blessing? How? Alone in my studio, writing stories? With my family? Reaching out to friends?

We are also called to be as strangers to each other, to recognize and acknowledge that others can and will surprise us, if we allow them to. If we approach each other (strangers, family, friends) neither from a place of fear, nor from a place of over-familiarity, what will we learn?

To be a blessing is to push against, as well as to meet. My ideas, experiences, perspective, beliefs will not match up perfectly with yours, no matter how we might wish it. Unity is not conformity.

The divine in me sees the divine in you.

But you are not me. I am not you.

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To be blessed is to be given something to carry. A blessing can be heavy. It can ask a lot of the other, the one who is seen. As a coach, as a teacher, as a parent, what I hope to communicate is the deep value in trying; not striving, necessarily, it doesn’t have to be so strenuous; trying. To say: I tried, is to acknowledge your own effort. To say: You tried, is to see someone else’s, to name it.

There’s a lightness to trying. There’s acceptance that trying doesn’t always lead to success. There’s room for surprise. Experiment. Consider. Be blessed. Leap. What if you try and you discover something different, something unexpected, something you weren’t looking for? Isn’t that wonderful too? To try is to leave room for curiosity.

xo, Carrie

Right now right now right now
February reflections

3 Comments

  1. Sarah

    So beautiful Carrie.
    ‘There’s a lightness to trying. There’s acceptance that trying doesn’t always lead to success.’
    I love this.

    Reply
    • Carrie Snyder

      Thank you, Sarah! I’d like to think this is my entire life philosophy, summed up. It’s a helpful affirmation to tell ourselves, when feeling down. It can also feel amazing to remind yourself when marking moments of celebration: you tried and you did it! Or you tried and it all happened differently than you’d planned, and here you are!

      Reply
      • Sarah

        Oh, yes! Thank you, Carrie. Just something about that word, lightness, that I might carry around with me this month.

        Reply

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