Everything that you will ever need is inside you right now. There is no need to climb Mt. Everest or run a marathon. Work instead on truly calming your mind, for a minute, an hour, a month. There is no need to find a soul mate or a drinking buddy. You have a tireless infinitely fascinating companion between your own two ears. There is no need for despair; boundless hope is woven into the DNA inside every cell of your body. You have perfection and ugliness and complexity and simplicity. You have countless questions and a larger number of answers. You have every person you have ever known contained in your neural network. Talk with your Grandmother about dandelion soup and riding on the handlebars of Grampa’s bicycle gliding down country roads. You have the strength to overcome any challenge. You also have enough doubt to crumble 1000 times at the slightest challenge.
You can overcome any challenge, and yet fail at them all equally easily. Having the answers is of little good if the questions are unknown. Just because each of us has the ability to overcome every obstacle does not mean that we will, or could, or maybe even should. The path is our intentions and abilities and fears manifest. Sometimes you just need to walk.
There are no beautiful sunrises at the beach or in the mountains, they are inside each of us! Equal rights and clean water and altruism are inside waiting to be discovered. While the wisdom and guidance that we need to rise above the most challenging twist is inside of us, so too is the distraction and ambivalence required to safely never even look. The smallest seed of yin contains a kernel of yang.
We need to look inward more and outward less. The solutions and challenges are not out there somewhere. The cures for all the myriad of cancers is inside every one of us, as is the path forward for regional or world peace. Similarly, we need to spend less time trying to figure out the answers to questions as we do trying to ensure that we have given sufficient effort in determining what the questions are. Once we know what the real questions are, the answers are often automatic and obvious. A few nights good sleep works wonders.
This is not to say that what we feed our bodies and our souls does not matter. That does not mean that we can neglect watering and nurturing ourselves. That does not mean that all parts of us are great or that one part is better than another. Who and what we surround ourselves with has a huge impact on how easily we can find the useful answers within just as it profoundly affects our stamina in the long trial of life. It’s a lot easier to start a fire with a match than a bucket of water. It is a lot easier to start a fire if we are looking for the match in the kitchen drawer rather than under the refrigerator. Sufficiency and efficacy do not equal inevitability.
Confidently share yourself with those around you, both friend and foe. Sometimes trying less hard is the secret. You are built of stardust and dreams!
