By Mark Nepo Let no one keep you from your journey, no rabbi or priest, no mother who wants you to dig for treasures she
After 20 years
In the field of PR, Communication and Marketing, your value seems to diminish if you stay in one place for too long. And I worry about that sometimes. From the outside looking in it may seem this way, but the truth is, I have moved to different places without ever changing physical surroundings. The ongoing dance of the incoming and outgoing international and local colleagues around me, a long time stayer, has been like the insidious caress of a spring flowing over a stone: the stone may seem like it is never changing to the unobservant eye but if one looks closely, they see the shapes of change, the patina of continuous flow and the healed crevices of shocks that passed.
Parenting lessons
When we choose to entertain lies because somehow we feel that they help our children, we do nothing else but teach our children that lying is the way to get through life. We underestimate our children if we think they cannot tell, even at young ages, that their parents are unhappy, that their relationship is loveless, that they (the kids) are a burden. Fake smiles, fat wallets and no boundaries are harmful wannabe blindfolds. They only teach one lesson: when lying to yourself gets too hard to bear, you can numb your feelings with these.
control is not a heart word
Any failure throws me in a vortex of such despair that I can’t even bear the thought of it. Perfection is still my dance and, in all of the work I have done with myself over the past decades, I have peeled only the outside layers of the onion: the middle, probably the stinkiest and hottest part of it, is still there, untouched, disguised as a quality that fools me into thinking I am helpful.
Inner teacher
When we think, hear or understand something that is deeply true for us, our inner teachers rise in us as a delicious, lucid resonance. When we grasp truth, any truth, from the correct solution to a math problem, to the capacity for love, all of our ways of knowing align.
Snapshots of the past and one whisper of hope for the future
When you grow up with no education around the concept of divinity, but you hear of a God mentioned in certain circles and language expressions, you make your own representation. “Our Father who art in Heaven” must be like … my father. So God became someone to fear. Someone to please. Someone whose whims could never really be anticipated but had to if you wanted to be safe. Someone who struck you when you were wrong – and you prayed for just the thunder and not the beating.
The week of battles not fought
I used to be passionate, intense, outspoken – meaning also putting a foot in my mouth more often than not. Not that I miss the latter. One small but sure step at a time I find that I am pushing myself into silence, into a not my monkeys, not my battle sort of attitude.
