A warm hello to you,
hope this email finds you well on this glorious Sydney autumn day. Sitting in the sun a little earlier on, reading, a quote by Archbishop Desmond Tutu grabbed my attention: “We are fragile creatures, and it is from this weakness, not despite it, that we discover the possibility of true joy”. From…not despite? Doesn’t it usually go like this: I’ve had much hardship, but despite it all, I still feel joyful? Joy, then, seems like the winning prize, the trophy over adversity, the proof that we won’t’ be beaten. It seems like a good thing, doesn’t it? And yes, I think it is….in some way. But perhaps this way of thinking can create a good-bad situation, a duality; one is desirable, the other isn’t. One we want, the other we want to distance from. And doesn’t this inner disunion take away deep peace and ultimately….joy.
But what, if, for a moment, we turn this on its head and play with possibilities. What if we could deeply know and be ok that we are fragile creatures; what if we could appreciate that loss and grief, loneliness and despair, fear and pain are just a sign that we are humans of tender hearts and soft underbellies. What if we could sit firm in the midst of life, meeting challenges with open eyes and open hearts without being taken hostage by them? Takes guts, takes stamina. ‘To have hardship without becoming hard, to have heartbreak without being broken’, as the Archbishop says. And what if joy could take its place alongside everything else we like or dislike, and we could lean in, give it space and be nurtured by it?
I leave you with this contemplation and hope to see you at our ‘Awakening Joy” course in August (but you need to be quick as there are only a few places left. See below).
EnJoy your weekend
Warmly
Sabina