PEBBLE
Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
-Alan Watts, shared by David in Los Angeles, CA
BOULDER
Learning to drop what we’re doing, however momentarily, and to genuinely pay attention in the present moment, without attachment or bias, helps us become clear, just as a snow globe becomes clear when we stop shaking it and its flakes settle.
—Lama Surya Das
shared by Ellie in Oklahoma via Tricycle
PONDER
Does this ever happen to you…where something kinda small goes wrong and because it’s like the 3rd or 4th thing that went wrong at roughly the same time you start urgently trying to fix everything and work yourself up into a frenzy which then causes even more things to go wrong?
That never happens to me, ever. I just figured that it is a thing that happens sometimes to other people. (Or, it happens to me more often than I like to admit, and in fact it just happened which is what inspired this issue of Ripples.)
When it does happen to you, what is the thing that usually turns things around for you? For me it is sometimes another person who notices things are in a bit of a swirl…and they gently nudge me to take a breath. Occasionally I’ll figure it out on my own…I’ll realize my situation is kinda crummy and yet also kinda comical and I’ll pause long enough to smile and gently nudge myself to take a breath.
If your waters are a little muddy these days, or if a blizzard of stuff is swirling about, I hope you can pause, take a deep breath, and wait long enough for things to settle down a bit.
Peace,
Paul
