Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First
Stories of Hope and Connection
Adversity is like a strong wind. I don’t mean just that it holds us back from places we might otherwise go. It also tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that afterward we see ourselves as we really are and not merely as we might like to be.
Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha, pg. 348
Everyone faces adversity. Lean into it.
I am borrowing from Matt Haig’s The Comfort Book for today’s Oxygen Mask Moment, as the end-of-school-year madness (and weeding my garden) absorb all of my “discretionary” time. Plus, it’s so, so good.
To the below I would add, it’s not only okay, it’s better. So much more genuine and real.
It’s okay to be broken.
It’s okay to wear the scars of experience.
It’s okay to be a mess.
It’s okay to be the teacup with the chip in it. That’s the one with a story.
It’s okay to be sentimental and whimsical and cry bittersweet tears at songs and movies you aren’t supposed to love.
It’s okay to like what you like.
It’s okay to like things for literally no other reason than because you like them and not because they are cool or clever or popular.
It’s okay to let people find you. You don’t have to spread yourself so thin you become invisible. You don’t have to always be the person reaching out. You can sometimes allow yourself to be reached. As the great writer Anne Lamott puts it: “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”
It’s okay not to make the most of every chunk of time.
It’s okay to be who you are.
It’s okay.
Matt Haig, The Comfort Book
Let your light shine!
Be well, deep breath, you got this.
We will be alright.
I mentioned the book The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist in my last post, Sometimes Asking is Giving. As Ms. Twist explains, “What’s poor is [people’s] circumstances, not them, and the unlocking of a vehicle to change circumstances is a gift; the radical truth about money and life is sufficiency. If you clear away the mindset of scarcity, you will find the surprising truth of enough. When we recognize enough, when we have more than enough, that excess, that’s for others.”
I shared a quote about one’s attitude two weeks ago, and this is related. It’s a mindset shift, from scarcity to abundance. It changes everything in how we approach life, ourselves, and others. When you realize you have enough, that you are enough, you can give of yourself more. Does anyone else remember Sark? This particular quote about Enough is from her book Inspiration Sandwich, which was also the genesis of much hilarity about the complete and utter dump in the deep woods of Maine that my friend Jen and I lived in one summer, which we affectionately called the Magic Cottage thanks to Sark. It was magical all right, hornets and mice living in the walls and all. But that’s a story for another time.
“There is a distinction between sufficiency and true abundance; if you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t need, it frees up oceans of energy that’s all tied up in that chase to pay attention to what you already have. When you nourish and share it, you make a difference with what you have and it expands. What you appreciate, appreciates.”
Lynne Twist
Deep breath.
You will be alright.
This has been another Oxygen Mask Moment.
Put Your Own Oxygen Mask on First 