What's Trying to Get Itself Born?

DO ME A FAVOR, PLEASE?

Would you do me a favor, please? Would you do your friends and loved ones and the whole world a favor? Don’t pretend you're less powerful and beautiful than you are. Don't downplay or neglect the magic you have at your disposal. Don't act as if your unique genius is nothing special.

OK? Are you willing to grant us these small indulgences? Your specific talents, perspectives, and gifts are indispensable. The rest of us need you to be bold and brazen about expressing them.





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WHAT'S TRYING TO GET BORN?

Anne Lamott writes: When a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born—and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.





HOW TO GET WHAT YOU WANT

If I ever produce a self-help manual called The Reverse Psychology of Getting Everything You Want, it will discuss the following paradoxes:

a. People are more willing to accommodate your longings if you're not greedy or grasping.

b. A good way to achieve your desires is to cultivate the feeling that you have already achieved them.

c. Whatever you're longing for has been changed by your pursuit of it. It's different from what it was when you felt the first pangs of desire. To make it yours, then, you'll have to modify your ideas about it.

d. Be careful what you wish for because if your wish does materialize it will require you to change in ways you didn't foresee.

Any others you can think if?





BRAINWASH YOURSELF!

Brainwash yourself before someone nasty beats you to it. Study the difference between wise suffering and dumb suffering until you get it right. Commit crimes that don't break any laws. Build illusions that make people feel so beautiful they shed their illusions.

Pretend to be crazy so you can get away with doing what's right. Sing anarchist lullabies to homosexual eagles. Love your enemies in case your friends turn out to be jerks. Review in detail the history of your life, honoring every moment as if you were conducting a benevolent Judgment Day.

Eat money. Fuck gravity. Drink the sun. Dream like a stone.





You could become a master of renegade sacraments, dissident splendor, and secret freedom.





THE WORLD MIGHT BE A POEM

I sense the world might be more dreamlike, metaphorical, and poetic than we currently believe—but just as irrational as sympathetic magic when looked at in a typically scientific way. I wouldn't be surprised if poetry—poetry in the broadest sense, in the sense of a world filled with metaphor, rhyme, and recurring patterns, shapes, and designs—is how the world works. The world isn't logical, it's a song.

—David Byrne




DANCE LIKE EVERYONE IS WATCHING

Supaman is an Apsáalooke rapper and fancy dancer. He founded the Native American hip-hop group Rezawrecktion.

He says: "They say to dance like nobody is watching. I think that implies that we are afraid or ashamed to dance in front of the people. I say dance like everybody watching. Dance like your children are watching, your ancestors, your family.

"Dance for those who are hurting, those who can't dance, those who lost loved ones and those who suffer injustices throughout the world. Let every step be a prayer for humanity!

"Most of ail dance for the Creator, who breathed into your soul so you may celebrate this gift of life!”