While spending some quiet time in the Catskill Mountains last week, I had the opportunity to read Mary Pipher’s book, Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World. After becoming a bestselling author and speaker, Mary Pipher sought out inner quiet and peace. It’s a book about her journey home within. With all her great success, she realized she was unhappy and anxious. Pipher sought a journey of self-reflection and meditation in order to create a more fulfilling and joyful life. She is honest about her struggle with depression and despair. Pipher writes, “I suspect most of us feel as if our lives are both pedestrian and momentous. We all experience ourselves as exceptional and ordinary. Within us, we host libraries of narratives and experiences. And yet we are aware that we share a great deal of emotional terrain with everyone we meet.”
We all experience peaks and valleys. They make up who we are. What we do with them and how we respond to them ultimately becomes the story we tell ourselves and others. As Pipher says, “For their own reasons, many people politely fall apart at some point in their lives. How they regroup and move on determines what their future will be.”
In this moment, we are both (extra)ordinary and exceptional. In every moment, we are love. When we forget, all we need to do is breathe. Breathe ourselves back to self-love. Follow your breath and let it lead you – home to yourself.
If you really listen, you can hear the universe singing to you…you are loved. And so you are.
Mary Anne