I love the sounds of my neighborhood. There’s the little girl that loves, I mean LOVES jump roping. Every day her YeYe (Grandfather) times her to see how long she can go, and I can hear the rhythmic sound of plastic hitting the pavement over and over again, followed by excited exclamations of improvement.
The Erhu, my favorite Chinese instrument, that my neighbor plays in the distance in the afternoon. Birds. Meows from the neighborhood cats. The man that sings Chinese Opera on his way home. The guy that sneezes every day loudly. Traffic in the distance. The lady that calls out to the neighborhood every morning selling something I still can’t quite figure out.
All the sounds I only started hearing when I broke my foot last September and actually started slowing down.
How do we choose to show up now?
This is one of the most challenging epochs the world has ever faced. We are all living history. It is up to us the story we write now for future generations. So how do we choose to show up?
Hope
How Do We Navigate Change?
Almost nothing is clear or certain these days. Overnight our reference points have been uprooted, and many of our shadows have come to the surface. Literally a month to the day before I broke my foot, I wrote a post called “What Does it Take to Make a Change?” Looking back, it was prophetic. It was indicative of the fact that I knew that things in my own life needed to change and I was trying to begin that shift, but if I’m really honest, I rushed it. I didn’t make time for real change.
I Didn’t Listen
I didn’t heed my own intuitive warnings, and within 3 weeks after writing that post, I had gotten into my first and only bicycle accident, burned my face with hot oil, and broke my foot. Overnight all my plans disappeared, and I was stuck at home for 4 weeks. All of a sudden, I was forced to change. Forced to sit down and take an honest look at myself, my life, and the rapidly deteriorating identities I had built my entire world upon — chief among them — always on the go.
Change isn’t easy. There are some of us that do better with change and those of us who fight it tooth and nail, but wherever you are on the spectrum, it is clear that the world is going through a global shift.
What is the story you will tell about this time?
We are the creators of history, so what is the story we will tell? What will we tell our grandchildren? Or our great-grandchildren about this time?
The truth is much in our world is broken and has been for sometime. When we rebuild, what can we create? How can we create better systems that support all of us and our world?
You’re Up! The Planet Needs You
If you’re reading this, you have a role to play.
You may instantly know what that is or you may have to sit with it and listen, but it will come to you. The planet needs you. You and others like you are our hope. And hope heals.
Start with your heart. It is the wisest language humanity has.
Do the Next Right Thing
Take a lesson from Frozen 2’s “The Next Right Thing” and take it one step at a time. None of us have the answers for how all of this is going to go, but we can each in our own way, “Do the Next Right Thing” for ourselves and each other.