How did it get to be the last day of July?!? Summer in New England is beautiful – it’s just so GREEN. I was recently at a quiet Maine beach, taking in nature’s awesomeness, which you’ve likely gathered is one of my fave pastimes. My beach visits rarely involve sunbathing, but I do love to walk the beach, to sit and watch (and smell! and hear!) the ocean, and to watch all the beach birds do their thing. The pic that accompanies this post is one that I took on my walk along the beach and its abutting grassy edges. A slice o’ Heaven.
I got to thinking about the ocean, and how it’s “color” is mostly a reflection of the sky, and how we just see this vast expanse of rippled water, but there’s a whole, ginormously-busy world under that surface. Upwards of a million species, and that’s just the animals (including corals) – then there’s plankton (which supply 50-80% of planet earth’s oxygen), and plants, and little micro-organisms, and on and on. It’s like that whole “tip of the iceberg” thing where what we see is only a tiny representation of the enormity of what’s there, just below the surface. The inside (the depths of the ocean) is waaaaayyy more complex than what we see on the outside (the surface).
And people are like that too.
Sometimes we can make the mistake of painting someone with all one color. We can meet someone and think we know them from spending 10 minutes (or 10 hours or 10 days) talking to them. We can have a conversation with someone and decide that that conversation sums up their character. Or we assign them the torch of that which we feel bad about in ourselves. But?each of us is so much more interesting and layered and complex and juicy than any of that.
In truth, most of us want to let our freak flag fly and be loved. We want to be truly seen and be accepted. We want to know that we?re loveable and we want to feel lovING. When we remember this, it helps us cut others a little slack. It helps us cut ourselves a little slack! And it shoos away judgement in favor of curiosity and connection. In favor of both recognizing our same-ness and honoring our unique-ness.
I invite you to spend a week being truly curious about people, operating on the supposition that there’s more to each and every one of us than meets the eye. Maybe see how that feels, and invite a shift in the way that you See others, remembering that it’s all just perception. And that the inside is way more complex and interesting than the outside.
Create Vibrant Health: BodyMindSpirit?
With love & plankton-gratitude,
Laurie
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