Photo by Roman Kraft (instagram)

I’m learning that we are vastly layered beings, complex in our imperfections, which we are so quick to scorn and which we so quickly try to hide, avoid, or fix. But every imperfection is just as much a method of communicating with ourselves. Fear, I’ve learned, may seem like a basic inconvenience, but underneath it – as with so many things – there is a part of ourselves that is just trying to be seen, that just wants to communicate our struggle. Listening, I’ve learned, is most certainly not a weakness. Listening does not mean giving in. Listening means bearing witness. Listening means gathering wisdom and gently correcting what is inaccurate. But mostly, the act of listening is the act of being open-hearted. Listening is being curious. Can you imagine being curious without opening your heart? If you were to ask me what I love about myself or how I would describe myself, that would be it: I have an open heart and a curious mind.

And those are my greatest tools, the only things I really need because they can create moments of bravery and they can cultivate an attitude of kindness. It’s the opposite – a closed mind and a closed heart – that breed fear and intolerance and that absolutely stunt our growth. It’s not what I need, and the world certainly needs no more of it. But what makes openness such a brave, impossible thing is the vulnerability behind it. And vulnerability is often something we have to relearn. We mistakenly believe vulnerability is the opposite of strength when in reality vulnerability is the threshold we all must cross in order to be truly strong, truly brave.

Open hearts, curious minds – not just with others, but with ourselves.

Photo by João Silas (instagram)

“When I think of the word ‘beauty,’ some of the faces of those that I love come into my mind. When I think of beauty, I also think of beautiful landscapes that I know. Then I think of acts of such lovely kindness that have been done to me, by people that cared for me, in bleak unsheltered times or when I needed to be loved and minded. I also think of those unknown people who are the real heroes for me, who you never hear about, who hold out on frontiers of awful want and awful situations and manage somehow to go beyond the given impoverishments and offer gifts of possibility and imagination and seeing. I also always when I think of beauty think of music. I love music. I think music is just it. I love poetry as well, of course, and I think of beauty in poetry. But music is what language would love to be if it could.”

— John O’Donohue in conversation with Krista Tippett

Listen to Krista Tippett's conversation with the late philosopher-poet John O'Donohue at OnBeing.

I have a habit – and I know I’m not alone in this – of looking for validation from others. Whether I’m writing an e-mail or weighing a big life decision, I’ve always felt the need to ask, “Does this sound okay?” or “Do you think that’s a good idea?” I always knew it was an insecurity, but I never considered that it was anything more than a quirk; certainly not a harmful one. But despite how common the insecurity is, I’ve realized that it can be harmful, because the more we feed it, the more it grows. And the more it grows, the louder it gets. And the louder it gets, the quicker we are to let the fear run our lives. Sooner or later insecurity owns us, and it doesn’t know what else to do but be insecure.

The search for validation, as I’ve come to know it, is the offspring of insecurity. But it’s not just about the need to be accepted: it’s the belief that we are unable to validate ourselves. When the weight of that realization fully hit me I thought: You, self, need to give yourself permission. You need to give yourself permission to see, to discover, to hold, to understand, to be okay. You need to give yourself permission to be your own validation. You also need to give yourself permission to make mistakes, to fail and to look foolish. Because it is going to happen. Most likely – and with your track record, let’s be honest – you are going to fail at some things and you will feel embarrassment and shame and regret. And that’s okay. Give yourself permission to know – to trust – that it’s okay. Maybe even, if you can, strive to give yourself permission to accept that those mistakes and failures are wonderful, because when the dream-house you’re trying to build crumbles all around you you’ll be able to stand on the ruins and reach higher, and you’ll learn things, and eventually you’ll be in the right place with the right tools and all four walls will stand. But you have to give yourself permission to get started so you can finally stop toeing the dirt and you can finally look up, and see, and estimate, and hope, and try.

Of course, if it took just telling myself that speech only once, I’d be a lot farther in my life than I am (wouldn’t we all?). It’s like everything else: it’s a practice. It’s a process of once again relearning this thing called life and unlearning all the self-shame we’ve carried with us, all the things we’ve allowed because we thought that’s just how it was supposed to be. It’s so hard for so many reasons, namely the fact that it takes time and we live in an age of super-mega instant gratification. Who wants to wait for results anymore? We just want to see them. But the first step is the first step, and it leads to more success, more peace, more awareness – more permission.

For the better part of the last two months I was in some murky territory with my self-image. I was slugging along somewhere between feeling depressed and careless; I dealt with much negative self-talk and acute loneliness. When I finally got my head above water I tried to analyze what I was doing differently that had caused this surge of gloom. The answer surprised me: I had stopped writing. More specifically, I had stopped keeping a journal.

I had filled up the pages of one and moved on to pick out another, but as it was New Years I piled so much ceremony on starting anew. And so I waited for important thoughts, for cinematic moments, for ceremony. I put it off, thinking so much else outweighed it on the “important” scale. And to my surprise I really suffered from not having the outlet. Something clicked; I realized what was missing and finally gave up on waiting for inspiration, and back I went to scribbling random thoughts in my abominable handwriting. When I did that, it was like coming home within myself.

It seems silly that such a simple activity can hold so much sway on a person, but it really rings true for me. The only way I can think to explain it is simply that I am, at the heart of it all, a writer. I have no other word to put in front of it – I’m not any one type of writer. My only thoughts when I realized how much better I felt after starting again was, It must really be deep down in my bones.

Keeping a journal is much more explorative than writing for an audience. It’s a practice that first requires and then allows you to dig down through the soil of your soul to the place where the roots of you reside. When we successfully keep a journal, it becomes an appendage, the extension of ourselves that allows the heart and mind to meet up and figure things out. The difference in journaling, for me, is all about the freedom, which I’ve become addicted to. In a world full of articles telling us how to write to attract readers and grow our audience, journaling reminds us how to be alone, how to write for ourselves, and especially how to think for ourselves.

In my journal I may write a list of things that have made me happy lately; I might write a rambling essay or a short passage; I might write my fears or my joys; I may list goals or quotes or write a poem. The only constant is that I never know what it’s going to be when I pick up the journal, and I never know when I’m going to pick up the journal. I don’t set aside time to do it at a set point every day because I’ve learned the flaw of that: I can’t plan to be inspired, and I can’t put off being inspired for a time when self-expression would be more convenient. So all I can do is keep my journal with me so that, when the desire to write something arises, I’ll write something. And I’ll learn a little more about myself in the process.

There’s an awful lot to be brought down by throughout the year, whether it’s the personal stresses that complicate our everyday lives or the bigger, often scarier things going on in the world at large. There’s always something that prompts our heads to shake, our eyes to turn downward, and our shoulders to sag under the weight of an invisible but emotionally tangible burden. Sometimes you just want to cry. Sometimes you just need to cry. That’s okay. (I’m stilling learning this.)

The holidays have always been special to me in part because they offer a bit of wisdom in dealing with the things that can weigh our shoulders down; rather than avoiding, escaping, ignoring, they teach us to shine a light. The holidays don’t symbolize turning away from what’s difficult, but rather turning towards it, letting the unsightly dark spots of life be seen; witnessing them, accepting them, and most importantly, sending love and peace where it’s needed. What the holidays symbolize, as it turns out, is remarkable instruction on how to live.

It’s no coincidence that light plays a big part in this season, whether it applies to a religion or a tradition or a personal inclination (a menorah, a Christmas tree, a candle, a Yule log). The most basic truth of light is that it is illuminated by darkness. Light can alter darkness, but darkness can’t snuff out light. Even the night comes only because the sun chooses to set.

What this symbolism of light during the holiday season means to me is the practice of peace, joy, and constancy. Not a perfect practice, but a hopeful one. In my experience, it’s about simply endeavoring. I believe that life is about doing the best we can, and the holidays – this season of light and peace, of comfort and joy – help me define what my best is.

Peace and joy are stalwart qualities when they’re nurtured into positions of power within us; which is to say, when we cultivate them and help them grow to a size that cannot be overlooked. Feed them more often than anger and resentment and the difference will amaze you. But we do essentially have to coexist with all the different atmospheres of our emotional selves, just like we have to coexist with all the atmospheres of the emotional world in which we live. I’ve learned that peace and joy help with that, too. Gradually, whenever I’m met with a difficulty that burdens my spirit, my spirit does its best to acknowledge the darkness with the patience of peace while the compassion of joy sends love where it’s needed. I’ve also found that my motivation for sending out love can be so strong that it overpowers that instinct to turn away. This practice has proven to be strong and valiant for me and I’m grateful that the holidays come around every year to remind me, and to help me celebrate it.

At some point this year, three words began popping up in my mind at random intervals. They werecompassion, courage, and creativity. I was drawn to them as a trio, their collective briskness and the way they fitted together with other favorite words like cozy and comfort and connection. Life in the dependable Cs. Consistency. Completion. Consideration. But it was compassion, courage, and creativity that came around most often. I was seeing and using “compassion” a lot as I began trying to make more ethical choices in my style of living, and I picked “courage” as my word of the year back in January; through my work in therapy I began to understand that “creativity” is my constant mode of expression and conversation, my greatest wish for my own life. It’s a sign to myself that I’m doing okay, so long as I’m creating, because that means I’m continuing to grow and learn.

Eventually, I realized that the three words are interconnected and it dawned on me that each one symbolized a part of my life that I wanted to work on. Not just wanting – these were parts of my life that I was just starting to understand the importance of. They were necessary parts of my life – vital, even. And as the fullness of each began to take shape I recognized in them the refuge and the source of meaning each could hold if I would take the time to tend to them like little gardens of the soul. That would be very important, very lucrative work. It required patience and dedication, and a gentle, hopeful spirit.

The compassion element was first to dawn on me. Compassion means some of the hardest work for me, yet somehow I mistakenly thought it would be the easiest. This is the broadest because it includes self-love, and self-love contains a multitude of struggles. Self-love pertains to body image – a saga of its own – as well as acceptance, permission, and comforting the frightened inner-child. That’s powerful work, and it’s profoundly challenging. Compassion also includes my spiritual practice – whatever that may be – and the acts of giving, caring, sharing. The compassion of the self and the selfless alike. How I treat myself and others, essentially.

Courage is its own small-big practice, but it also serves as an umbrella for its other companions, because the fact is it takes courage to be compassionate and it takes courage to be creative (goodness knows). But on its own, courage exemplifies the taking of action – what I think will be the hardest, and so avoid, but what time and again proves to be not so scary after all. It’s taking the chance, exposing myself to a scary situation. That can be literal (anxiety-provoking), but it can also be hypothetical, as hypotheticals are less scary by nature but sometimes just as big of a deterrent. Courage is the commitment to the whole shebang.

Creativity is the letting out, it’s the expressing and the doing. Frightful business. It’s also about reminding myself that every creative doing is an opportunity for mindfulness, for praying through my hands and finding inner-peace in the stitch of a knitting needle, the pen scribbling on the paper, the stirring of a pot of soup, or the colors layering themselves in the intricacies of a mandala. The creativity is also about the sharing; the act of allowing oneself to be vulnerable by exposing one’s most personal possession (one’s art) to the world. Because if you want to do creative work, you can’t keep it in the four walls of your self. You must put it in the window, at the very least. Sharing it allows you to test the waters of the self-kindness you’ve been nurturing. It helps you to build up your vital truth of being okay with who you are and what you can do, however limited.

Their interconnectedness was what I found most remarkable. It takes the openness of creativity and the diligence of courage to be compassionate. And it takes both gentle compassion and creative expression (for tapping into authenticity) to be truly, effectively courageous. And without the sensitivity of compassion or the daring of courage we cannot reach the apex of our creativity.

None can really be accomplished without the others; at least, not to the level of wholeheartedness with which I wanted to live. So without much ceremony my three little-big practices were born; part of it has been writing down as much as I can, as often as I can, and even going so far as to share my journey. What comes next is anyone’s guess, but I’m convinced that it’s the attention you give your practices that make them successful. That makes it all sound much less frightening, doesn’t it?

We tend to think that the existence of fear (particularly in abundance) means we must have a lack of courage. Despite having heard countless times that courage is always found within, there’s still a governing part of our minds that believes courage has to be acquired. I believed that for most of my life; I believed it a year ago when I decided to finally pursue courage once and for all, and I believed it seven months ago when I really began to put that decision into action. But somewhere along the way I’ve realized two things: one, courage looks different on everyone. Our idea of what courage is, what it looks and sounds like, varies. Widely. And two, that part of me that was misunderstanding courage had a name: that part was fear.

I know fear all too well because it’s loud. It flails its arms helplessly and pleads against the outlandish creativity and its little offspring dreams to stay quiet, stay where it’s safe. It pleads with courage to stay there, too, because as far as fear is concerned you just never can tell when courage will do something foolish and get you into a situation that will cause you untold embarrassment. And once that happens, courage will leave you there, and fear will be the only one to keep you company. Oh, except shame. And regret. And anguish. Its kin.

But courage doesn’t really leave. It just does what fear, in its blind panic, has trained it so well to do: it gets quiet. The work, then, is to call it back out, gently, and to grow valiant in the knowledge that it’s just as strong and just as reliable even if it doesn’t shake your bones with its volume.

Mary Anne Radmacher wrote, “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it’s the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.'” I’ve written that down, memorized it, and developed it as a sort of mantra, something of a courage-philosophy. But one thing I’ve learned is that it’s a practice. I don’t say those words to myself and think I’ve won or lost my struggle based on their ability to make me instantly more comfortable. Instead, I say those words as a way to acknowledge courage in its solitude, to call it out a little bit each time, and as a reminder to myself to get to know the place where it lives.

My courage may be a spectacularly well-trained quiet courage, and learning that has brought me closer to it.