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Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I go outside, even before I have coffee (I know, it’s weird for me too). I sit on the deck. I close my eyes. I let the quiet and the dark and sounds of the world waking up wash over me. I started doing this last summer—a form of morning meditation I suppose. Sometimes, I get caught up in what things have to look like. Meditation for example was something I held in my head as being VERY SERIOUS. Sitting on the floor, candle lit, sage burning, trying to continuously draw yourself back to your breath and away from the hundreds of thought that zip around like dragon flies in the spring. And sometimes it looks like this. (I mean not for me, let’s be honest) But more often these days, I am trying ask myself: What do I want from this moment? Why am I doing it at all? Is there another way to arrive there? So last summer, I started going outside. First thing. While it’s still dark sometimes (hard to do in the summer actually). There is something about closing off my sense of sight and letting the others pick up the slack that feels almost…lavish. Strange idea, I’m aware. But have you tried it? Our eyes take in so much all day long. The information is non stop: reading text whether it’s on a screen or otherwise (I hope you still read books), visual information whether it’s watching a video or watching your children, or watching the cars go by. It’s a lot. When you shut that off, the feeling (for me anyway) was literally soothing. Like a bath for my nervous system. Krista Tippet writes a Substack and hosts a podcast called On Being. Right now, she is doing a series called “The Hope Portal.” It’s part inquiry, part poetry (this is my own humble opinion she isn’t actually writing poetry), and she has conversations with some incredible humans about the proximity of hope and despair in today’s world. In the first episode, she talks about hope as a choice. As a practice—the idea that we need to build it like a “moral muscle.” This resonates deeply with me as someone who was raised with a fair dose of hope injected into most situations. In the worst of situations, my dad always says: “your life can change tomorrow. You never know what’s around the corner.” I’m positive there were times growing up when this was annoying to me. When I would rather have wallowed in my “misfortune,” and been a victim of whichever teenage circumstance I had the misfortune of being in. But here’s the thing: over the years, this seed was planted firmly in my soul. It grew roots. It became my default. And not in the toxically positive sort of way we ask people to smile through terrible pain and adversity. But in a quiet certainty that things would shift. That whatever situation I was in the middle of was somehow supposed to be happening. Even if I couldn’t see it. It has never stopped the hurt. Or the tears or the grief when difficult situations arise. But it has always held me in such a way that I could see the idea that I would be OK. That things would change one way or another. The curiosity to wonder how things might be different is a huge part of that. To dare to see beyond the fires of life or cloud that won’t budge is a huge part of this. Tippet says: “Curiosity is the quiet moral muscle that makes all the other virtues possible.” And although I have never thought of it this way before now, I can now completely see that Curiosity and Hope are intertwined. They walk hand in hand. If you aren’t curious enough to imagine something could be different, hope feels like it’s too far off—a tiny ship on other horizon of vast ocean of difficulty. But you can let the teeniest spark of curiosity in, even just for a moment, that ship is all of a sudden much closer. Almost as if you could swim there. Curiosity is the first step in any big change. Daring to wonder if your life could look different, feel different, be different, is something many people won’t allow themselves to do. Change is scary after all. But what if it’s less scary than standing still? Less scary than the idea that you might stay right where you are for the foreseeable future? Part of what I help people do is build that curiosity muscle. Be brave enough to wonder, “what if it IS possible to feel differently?” 4, 3, 2, 1
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