Thought Cookie: Edition 27, Vol. 3
I was writing in my journal two months ago about a birthday party I had been the recipient of the night before. I shared how thrilling it was to see my dear friends again. How honored and overjoyed I was to host them at our home. How enchanted I was to have them gather under a starry warm sky and imbibe their laughter and breathe their stories and feel my heart center connect again to our shared affection.
I mean to write, “this was a precious evening,” instead I wrote,
This is the precious everything.
Yes.
I did not correct that description.
The precious everything surrounds us daily. And is within us daily.
I think I started noticing it more regularly the day my eldest child was born.
Tightly curled eyelashes.
Tiny fingernails.
The clutch of a miniature hand around one of my fingers.
But then I go back further and realize I have been a witness to the precious everything since before I was a mother, back when I traveled this earth of my own volition and in my own time.
I saw it in the grime of Lima, Peru, exiting the airport terminal and being emotionally barreled by the chaotic cries for attention from men and women offering to usher me to my next destination.
I saw it in my daily walks by viridescent green rice paddy fields in northern Japan, and the simple wood spikes anchoring a weave of strings, stretched tightly across the field. (The strings help the tender new plants remain upright and grow.)
I felt it in the nervous and surrendering way I made my way alone into a traditional Japanese onsen nestled into a hillside and undressed, walking naked and exposed to curious eyes into the pools of cool water on a sweltering day.
At my best, I want to live in the way Einstein is purported to have described, ‘as though everything is a miracle.’
In the mornings, I walk by a saguaro cactus that stands at least 30 feet tall, its vertical expanse marked by the subtle waves of its spines and pleats. She grows an inch a year, and balances five arms, the first arm marking at least fifty years of existence. With five, it’s likely she’s been here over 200 years, standing solidly, witnessing the precious everything.
This is a gift.
Both her presence and my ability to walk past her daily and notice the flock of disparate local birds, love birds and cactus wren, hummingbird and sparrows, popping in and out of her trunk, nestling between her ribs, and drinking from her blossoms.
This desert earth mother is the precious everything.
When I am in a hurry, and distracted, when the dog is sluggish, or I am working my gray matter, pressing for solutions to my then-most urgent problem, I don’t even see I’ve passed her by.
I live in a sprawling city of millions, taken over by white settlers from the Yaqui, the Hohokam, the Pima Maricopa – who were forcibly moved out. And this land we needed so desperately to claim, we are generally too busy to notice her at all.
The through line of nature continues to unfurl despite all of our avarice and appropriation, our obsession with more, our ideas about ownership and privilege.
Nature will always have the first claim.
Everything is precious. The precious everything.
Today is the day to begin again to see it. Just to pause a moment and recognize. Let’s start there.
I say this to myself, who before I saw this saguaro this morning, was silently belittling my lack of creative achievement in my life thus far.
I say this for each of you, who read and who want to be seen and to feel connected to something larger than yourself.
I say this because I believe this simple act of seeing can begin a healing.
The precious everything can be a healing.
If we see the precious everything in the little parts of our everyday, our spirits will be buoyed.
If we see the precious everything in ourselves, we can love more fully.
If we see the precious everything in the person most different than us, we can accept how similar we really are and close what divides us.
And if today is a rough day, even your roughest one yet, and even if you can’t see it yet, it’s there.
It’s there.
It’s there.
Did this Thought Cookie stir something inside of you?
If it did, will you share it? (If you do, there’s a writing prompt below as a kind of thank you note.)
My intention is to grow Thought Cookie to a readership of about 100 this year. I’m around 53 right now, a little more than halfway there. Every person who comes along on this journey matters to me. If you know someone who is a deep thinker and feeler, or in need of some deep thoughts and love, send them this little soul note and encourage them to Subscribe.
BONUS CONTENT for my LOVELY READERS
Thinking Prompt: 2 Minutes of Thoughtful Munching
Choose an everyday setting for your life currently. It might be your office, your home, the view from your kitchen window, the block you live on in your neighborhood. Take notice of this place as though you are visiting for the first time. Can you spot a part of precious everything here? What is it?