I’ve been thinking about breathing lately.
How it just seems to happen.
We don’t think about it until it gets labored or we are short of a breath or two.
But under everything in our lives, is breathing.
It is a kind of ground for consciousness.
It is keeping the lights on.
The quality of your day is dependent on ~20,000 breaths a day.
Our world is built of pieces. Like breaths.
The quality of your internet connection reflects how well the packets are moving.
Your nutritional intake is dependent on bites of food.
Big ideas are made of little flashes moving through your brain up to 268 miles per hour. (Sparks move inside you.)(Baby, you’re a fireworkfly)
We are pieces of pieces.
Companies, communities, and causes are made of people.
We see things as monolithic – solid, whole, together, but when you really get inside something, there are always pieces.
Atoms, Lego blocks, letters, and slow-twitch muscle fibers. All pieces.
What we accomplish is made of pieces too. The life you make, the work you do, the relationships you’re a part of…made of pieces.
It is tempting this time of year to teeter between euphoria and despair.
In every life, in every year, there’s always a hope for more. We have almost infinite capacity for hope and longing, so we want more from everything. Standing at the end of such a clear block of time, it’s not difficult to look back and despair for all that wasn’t, didn’t, or won’t be.
Click to download as a desktop wallpaper/printable poster
Breathe.
Turning our gaze forward, it’s easy to imagine the next year differently. So much that will be. All our hopes/dreams/longings manifested. Big things birthed, big breaks healed, big holes filled. Such a glorious and euphoric view, the future is.
The truth is more pedestrian. The future and the past are all just pieces. The same pieces, actually, that you have right now.
Breathe.
Swallow.
Blink.
Think.
That’s what makes this life beautiful and difficult.
Everything is small, simple, easy. The next right move, the next deep breath, the next right word.
But everything worth doing is difficult because it is a million right moves, a thousand deep breathes, pages and pages and pages of the next right words.
Life is made of pieces. We traffic in pieces. We are made of pieces. We are pieces. All we get is PIECES.
So even now, good traveler, as you stand in this present, this piece, at the moment when the line of NOW and the end of a big block of time happen to align, don’t get lost.
Your task today is easy. Your task for this next year is simple:
Take control of the pieces.
That’s it.
Think of all the big dreams you have. The moments you long for. The ones that will take away all your breaths. Break them down. To pieces. Look at them, so cute and cuddly. The atomic layer of your deepest hopes. Just little pieces. The tiniest manifestation of your dreams.
Look at this next year.
Don’t see it whole. Don’t see it in quarters or months.
See it in seconds. Minutes. Moments.
Set your intentions high – aim for your Everest – then come back to the present, set your compass true, and a take a step.
Take a breath. Swallow. Blink. Think.
2016 is coming. And 17. And 18. Don’t worry about those.
We are made of pieces, we make pieces, pieces make us.
Please make good pieces. The world is hungry for your hearts.
Enjoy the journey,
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