The nature of the human being is progress. The addictive pulls that pervade our culture, that claw at us in thousands of recorded messages, lie to us when they urge us to find some quiet backwater of “peace.” Our real nature is to swim in the current. We are much more trout than clams.
Harvey Jackins
despite knowing
they won’t be here for long
they still choose to live
their brightest lives
rupi kaur
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go. She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments. She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head. She let go of the committee of indecision within her. She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go. She didn’t search the scriptures. She just let go. She let go of all of the memories that held her back. She let go of all the anxiety that kept her from moving forward. She let go of all of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
Everytime I write a book, I’m challenged to live the message. I had to face my own perfectionism when I wrote The Gifts. I had to come face-to-face with criticism and courage when I wrote Daring Greatly, and I had to challenge all the stories when I wrote Rising Strong. Writing this book on true belonging felt like months of living in the wilderness to me.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
Mary Oliver
Excerpted from
When Death Comes
i bleed each month to help make humankind a possibility. my womb is home to the divine. a source of life for our species. whether i choose to create or not. but very few times is it seen that way. in older civilizations this blood was considered holy. in some it still is. but a majority of people. societies. and communities shun this natural process. some are more comfortable with the pornification of women. the sexualization of women. the violence and denigration of women than this. they cannot be bothered to express their disgust about all that. but will be angered and bothered by this. we menstruate and they see us as dirty. attention seeking. sick. a burden. as if this process is less natural than breathing. as if it is not a bridge between this universe and the last. as if this process is not love. labour. life. selfless and strikingly beautiful.
Rupi Kaur
I think the greatest threat to women’s equality is any belief system that treats women like property and that holds women responsible for men’s sexuality. It is not just that there are terrible parts of the world where women are treated like property and we see terrible things. I think that “grab them by the pussy’ is just as bad.
I think that misogyny, anyone who fails to accord to women the full dignity of personhood and citizenship, that those are belief systems and practices that undermine our liberty. And that we have to be vigilant and intolerant about them.
When I was a little girl I wanted to be things. Girls weren’t expected to be ambitious. I was a girl, who was a person, who wanted to do things. All people are multi-faceted. We have sexual qualities. We have mental qualities. We have roles we want to play in terms of reproducing the species, which is an extremely important thing to do. But any belief system that tries to define us by that and not by our full personhood, that holds us responsible for how men behave sexually, those are big threats to women.
Kim Campbell
12 May 2017
