book notes from "I will not die an unlived life"
I Will Not Die an Unlived Life: Reclaiming Purpose and Passion
by Dawna Markova
i started reading this book recently. i have a whole library full of these soul-searching kind of books and i read one every once in a while when i feel inspired/compelled to.
if people are interested in my responding ideas and list of quotes, they'll be in the extended section.
but this poem, which is also the title of the book, is a good one so i'll quote that here:
I will not die an unlived life,
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to be as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
i tend to say that life is too short for a lot of things: living in fear, people hurting others because of their fear, not spending time with loved ones, compromising your values and interests, etc. i also don't fear dying. what i fear is regretting not having lived to my fullest.
then i wondered.... what if i fear not living fully enough? and maybe, this is why i keep signing myself up for more things i'm interested or more things for me to do, because i have this fear that the moment i'm stagnant i'm dying.
maybe i need to realize that a moment to breathe is different from stagnating and that that breath of peace can enrich the rest of my life.
people may keep themselves busy with meaningless tasks, but it is also possible to keep yourself too busy with "meaningful" tasks such that those tasks start losing their meaning.
also another note:
i probably wouldn't have understood or appreciated this book a few years ago. a few years ago, i was more interested in learning specific ways to fight depression and anxiety, so something like this book would've sounded like meaningless new-age psychobabble to me then.
but i'm glad that i'm no longer so desperate to survive anymore... that now, i have enough peace and understanding in my mind to be able to appreciate a more poetic and philosophical way of approaching the search for passion and meaning in life.
because to me... depression was always about losing meaning in life. things become pointless. effort becomes meaningless. anxiety was about worrying about all the different possibilities and options and falling apart into a meaningless puddle of goo because with the indecision stemming from fear, i would become become paralyzed. and the paralysis would lead to the feeling that it was all meaningless in the end.
so yeah. this is good. i feel like i've made some progress away from falling in the abyss of not caring. :)
now some quotes....(there are many, so you might want to take them in shifts) some thoughts will be interspersed between them.
something encouraging to me:
This book is dedicated to Mary Jane Ryan and those
who insist on breaking free of the limitations of
their previous history,
who wish to love the life they live,
live a life they can love,
and
who are committed to serving the best of
what can be possible.
something to keep in mind in my own search in art.
pg 11:
"I once read that the Nobel Prize-winning South American poet, Octavio Paz, after realizing how much of his creative energy he had used to stay out of the life instead of participating in it, wrote a poem entitled After, as a commitment that he would no longer be in the great gift of life with hesitation, ambivalence, or reservation, and that he would no longer push life or love away. Because it so impassioned him with its truth, he read it to himself every morning and evening for the rest of his life."
i guess this is just part of being human. and no need to feel bad because you feel a little burned out.
pg 12:
"Any life crisis brings up issues of the purpose of one's life and the passion to live. But you don't have to be in a life-threatening situation to want to delve into this kind of inquiry. Some of us are called to it by numbness, fatigue, or boredom. Some of us have the sense that we're not using ourselves to the utmost. Even at their happiest moments, other feel something is missing."
"healing happens in a thousand, ten thousand, tiny, daily gestures."
when feeling a little disheartend by the journey ahead:
"The poem is a candle that my soul holds out to me, requesting I find a way to remember what it is to live a life with passion, on purpose. There is only enough lifhg to take the journey step by step, but that is all any of us really needs."
this is a lot like what john says about drawing. when we're doing blind contours, we can feel impatient and bored out of our minds. he said instead of thinking of how much you have left to do, coax yourself to do "just one more line. ok. good. now the next one."
pg 14:
"We need to practice the art of stripping away false notions about who we think we are so we can deal with what is real, and release anything that is deadening to our spirits. We have to learn to reconnect with ourselves so that we can stand for something that is greater than ourselves"
pg 15:
"When we find ourselves devoid of passion and purpose, the first thing we need to do is stop. But that's not easy. The rest of the world is zooming by at full speed. Left alone with ourselves, without a project to occupy us, we can become nervous and self-critical about what we should be doing and feeling. This can be so uncomfortable that we look for any distraction rather than allowing ourselves the space to be as we are."
pg 16:
"I am gropingn to understand what it might mean to truly love my life, to find out who I am beyond the econommic necessities of being a mind-for-hire. I want to stop running from my own tiredness, from the fear that if I am not accomplishing something, I will disappear."
pg 18:
"I need to give my attention to the simple things that give me pleasure with the same fervor I have been giving it to the complex things with which I drive myself crazy."
"'For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. A candle flowers in the space of night... My life lacks this quality of significance, and therefore beauty, because there is so little empty space. There are so few empty pages in my engagement pad or empty hours in which to stand alone and find myself.'"
pg 22:
"So many of us are afraid of meeting ourselves, alone, without distraction. We have been taught to fashion an image of who we think we are supposed to be and show that to the world. Through fear of knowing who we really are we sidestep our own destiny, which leaves us hungry in a famine of our own making. Each of us is here to give something that only we can offer, and when we avoid knowing ourselves, we end up living numb, passionless lives, disconnected from our soul's true purpose. But when you have the courage to shape your life from the essence of who you are, you ignite, becoming truly alive. This requires letting go of everything that is inauthentic."
pg 35:
" in the sheer immensity of solitude, when one can no longer draw energy from external sources, we come to see how much of what we habitually call meaningful purpose is merely the evasion of sitting still and meeting what is most difficult for us to receive with compassion -- our own pain."
pg 38:
"What I learned form her was a different way to relate to what is difficult: first create spaciousness inside myself by remembering that I am more than my pain, more than my confusion, more than my fear, more than the stories I can tell myself about those feelings. Then I can connect with what hurts. This is how I first discovered that compassion is the skillful way to respond to pain and difficulty. It is what makes it possible to open to what is occurring instead of shutting it out or walling off against it."
pg 40:
Befriending myself means becoming a refuge to and for myself so that I can be one for others. Ultimately, it means finding the courage to give myself the kind of presence and attention I have been giving to others for years.
pg 41:
"As I learn to 'drop' the stories and be present with what I actually experience, I have flashes of realizing that every person who has ever lived probably felt the very same thing I am feeling at some point in their lives. This seems like the first wedge of freedom in my mind. It leaves a kind of glimmering tenderness around the edges of my heart toward all of us who share the condition known as humankind."
"'When one is a stranger to oneself, then one is estranged from others.... ONly when one is connected to one's core is one truly connected to others."
pg 55:
"When and why did we create the abyss between ideas and feelings, logic and art, science and religion, work and play, hear tand mind?"
pg 56:
"I know I can forgive the man and never have to forgive his actions."
"The twisted seed of passion, rage, lived in me as well. Unless I open the door of my heart to it, unless I find new ways to relate and respond to it, I will never have full access to the vitality that is hidden at its core."
pg 57:
"In my mind, I threw into his coffin the belief that rage just happens to you, that something on the outside can make you feel that way, make you do what you do not choose to do. I also buried the assumption that we can "control" ourselves and the world enough to never feel anger or rage."
pg 58:
"I think of all the people since the beginning of time who have felt the engery we call rage. Because none of us knows how to befriend this energy, it spins off into words or actions that cause so much abuse and suffering."
pg 65:
"[Death] whispered, 'Do you want to die numb?'
'No!" I hissed back. "I'd rather die soft and feeling pain than hard brittle, and numb. I want to die with my heart free, wide open, wondering and loving fiercely!'
The response was immediate: 'Then how do you have to live so you can be sure to die that way?'"
pg 66:
"Like me, were you taught that you shouldn't enjoy anything too much or be too passionate because you'll hurt too much when you lost it? Whether or not we enjoy it, we lose it. We'll lose it all. All the more reason to enjoy our passion, to love what we love and store it up, so we'll be strong enough to stay present with the pain of loss when it comes."
pg 81:
"How do we reignite our passion after immense loss and grief? I'm coming to understand that this isn't something we achieve or learn or even earn. The realization that the source of passion is inside leaves me knowing that it is within our spphere of influence to recover, reclaim, and rekindle it. Crisis can force us deep enough to find that source in whatever we truly love. The deeper the channel that pain carves into our souls, the greater the capacity we have to allow the river of joy to run through us."
pg 82:
"It's not the events in your life that determine who you are, it's how you choose to respond to them."
pg 88:
"Loss trips away so much. Yet it can leave us with the understanding that the art of living passionately means learning to engage both the risk to reach as well as the grace of surrender."
pg 89:
"Loss can help us loosen our grip on all understandings of ourselves and the world so they can be rearranged into a higher and wider order. Loss can help us find and know our own strength. Loss can help us find what we truly value. most of all, loss of any kind can help us find how much we really need each other."
pg 90:
"Without loss, constraints, suffering pressing against your dreams, giving shape and direction to your destiny, you could never reach the sea. Crsis can force us deep enough to find out who we really are and what we truly love, and it is here, where there are no masks, no one else's values or beliefs, that passion lives."
pg 91:
"Loss can remind us that, as human being, we struggle with doubt and darkness in an imperfect world where suffering and grace both abound. it can teach us that our love really matters, that who we are and what we can do at our most essential level is enough."
"What is loved reveals its loveliness."
pg 94:
"I am thinking about how many people live with an overwhelming sense of emptiness, not because they don't have enough in their lives, but because they lack a sense of inner guidance. It is a dark time when so many of us think too small, so many are confined by their beliefs in their own inadequacy, and so many have lost faith in themselves. It's not pain in itself that's so hard on our souls, but the meaningless suffering that comes from feeling disconnected from a sense of purpose."
pg 96:
"No one can tell you how to find your purpose. It can only be found, slowly, in your own dark sky, in whatever is sacred to you, be that church or woods. It can't be found by searching around for a role model or learning how cultural heroes handled their difficulties. It is seldom found by following anyone else's rules. It lives in the rest in the place where music is born, the fertile void, the silence between notes. It is simple and basic. It emerges slowly as a sunrise, as we search through our gifts, our darkness, our losses and loves. Your job and mind is to be quiet and alone from time to time. To be present to ourselves and the natural world, and to be in conversation with what is hidden in us in such a way that we can explore what brings us more alive."
pg 97:
"'We are not broken, we are just unfinished.' Suddenly I realized that my future was not a series of damaged places that I needed to fix. Rather, my life was a work of art waiting to be completed."
pg 100:
"She explained that we all walk a spiral path she called the wisdom trail, and we walk on the foot of risk, then the foot of mastery, then back on the foot of risk. As I understood it, if a person stays on the foot of risk too long, they find themselves nervously hopping from thing to thing, never settling in and developing mastery. On the other hand, if they stay in their mastery too long, they get stuck in the mud and their sould never really gets to develop fully. Each time we shift from the foot of mastery to the foot of risk it takes a leap of faith, a little gasp in the unknown where God can enter."
pg 102:
"The natural human learning process is to track success and discard mistakes."
pg 104:
"...from the time we begin school, if not sooner, we are taught to be blind to our assets and only see our deficits. We are carefully marked on how many we got wrong on a test and, rarely, if ever, asked how we know how to spell the ones we got right. By the time we are adults, we are well versed in every one of our limitations, skilled in our incompetence. If we were fish in an aquarium, it would be as if we kept smashing against the glass, and forgot the fact that we were perfectly capable of turning ever so slightly and swinning gracefully in the water all around us."
this reminds me of what john clapp said about our artwork: the way we feel about our work today is how we'll feel about our work for the rest of our lives. it's always hard for me to acknowledge my accomplishments. it's as if i spend 99% of the time trying, 1% of the time appreciating what i accomplished and then i move directly on to yet another task or "deficiency" that needs to be improved upon.
it's weird, because there will always be something to "improve." but why do i need to beat myself up with yet another thing i have to improve? why can't i just let myself explore things because i'm interested in things? why this insane desire to be "good enough"? i mean... what does that exactly mean, anyway?
maybe the trick isn't even to "suck less" as john said. maybe... it's in "enjoying more."
pg 112:
"There is nothing that drives the human mind more than what is called an incomplete gestalt--an unmet need for closure of some kind. Imagine seeing a pad of paper lying near you with nothing drawn on the page but a circle that is not closed. Imagine hearing just this much of the song, 'Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all..." Imagine an itch in a very sensitive place that you cannot reach. Purpose, ultimately, is the drive to close that circle, finish that song, scratch that itch, bridge that gap."
this sounds a little funny to me because that is so much of how i feel an intense need to do things. i get to the point where i wonder if i'm being obsessive or compulsive or both. i mean.... like even now. i feel this intense need to finish this book. or in a lot of other things i do, where i'm just not satisfied until i reach that sense of closure and i will drive myself harder and harder till i get there. i imagine the degree to which my purpose drives me might be unhealthy. maybe the book will say something about that. or maybe it already has, when it is talking about learning to be still with yourself.
pg 130:
"Ultimately, all I know is that we get to keep on practicing opening our hearts to the raw stuff of life that every human being experiences, the nergy we label as fear, rage, pain, joy, and ecstasy. I know you can't get rid of any of it. You can only know it all with tenderness and honesty. I know we all suffer from a lack of compassion and mercy for ourselves and each other. I know I need to learn to observe with passion, to think with patience and to live with care. I know we begin and end in authenticity, and in between, our trask is to find ways to make that authenticity relevant to the world. I know there is nothing more previous that I can give than love. I know I forget all of this more often than I remember, and then I get to practice some more. And I will keep practicing, pressing vitality out of every last moment, until I die with a still-hungry heart."
pg 132:
"We all have stories about who we are that are exactly like my mother's girdle. And we wear them to bed as well. We cheat ourselve by identifying with a limited notion of who we are so we can fit in, belong to lives so much smaller than our souls long for us to be."
pg 134:
"'No punishment anyone might inflict on us could possibly be worse than the punishment we inflict on ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment.'"
"I have learned to feel comfort in my own silence, to listen until my heart knocks so loud I can hear nothing else. I am learning to create the conditions where a sense of purpose can arise. Where I can arise, all grumbly and confused. All unknowing and skinless. Moving through the nerves of questions that cannot be answered. Living through the insecurity of misery rather than the misery of security. I begin to feel fully alive, to live by values that are truly mine, and to know again what really matters to me, in a rhythm that goes with the grain of my soul."
pg 138:
"'I was a home, a sanctuary, a place to rest and nest the tiny carriers of seeds and possibilities which have broken open and flow out on their own. Now I have been abandoned, of necessity, so the next part of the cycle can emerge. If you try and hold onto me past my time I will crumble in your hands, because nothing can be permanent. All must change form in nature. It is time to release your dreams, in faith, to the world at large, and return.'"
pg 150:
"I need the reminding between it's so easy to think my life is about making money or being productive or checking off everything on the list. Then I reach for a magazine and there's writer and activist bell hooks reminding me: 'My students say "We're tired of loving." And I say, if you're tired of loving, then you haven't really been loving because when you are loving, you have more strength.' And I remember. We grow stronger in the act of loving something. It sustains us. It generates energy. If I am depleted or feel as if I've failed, ultimately it is because I have not been living in service to what I love."
pg 155:
"What are your inner gifts and talents? Most of us are reasonably articulate about our deficits and weaknesses--how many we got wrong on our spelling tests, how many things we have failed to accomplish during any given day. We become fluent at explaining our incompetencies, but look straight at our gifts and talents and then mutter, 'Oh, that old thing?' This leaves us awkward and confused about how to bring out assets and resources to the rest of the community. Too many of us believe we don't matter, and that what we do doesn't really make a difference."
Pg 161:
"'There is as much guidance in what does not and cannot happen in my life as in what does.' He says we burn out not by giving away too much, as most of us think, but by trying to give what we don't possess. In other words, our limitations as well as our gifts are great indicators of where and how we should be living our purpose. non of us can do everything--the skill is in knowing how to capitalize on our strengths and allow our limitations to indivate what *not* to give."
"Think of petting a cat against the way its fur naturally grows. Better yet, think of trying to create a beautiful piece of furniture by going against the grain of the wood. When the chemist, the man I spoke of at the beginning of this chapter, was working on in a world of paper, he was going against his own grain. He was interfering with the flow of love trying to come through him."
this is something i've been struggling with. i feel like i've spent a lot of my life trying to live up to my parents', relatives', teachers' expectations and i had a hard time figuring out what i loved to do and what i thrived under.
especially with my mom. i love her but we're very different people with different values. and the challenge for me is to resist feeling defeated by never living up to what she considers ideal and a "right" way of being and living. i've always grown up feeling like i was never who my mom wanted me to be. and well... i'm learning to accept the fact that that's just how things are going to be, and what can i do to do what is true to myself as well as maintaining a loving relationship with my mom?
"The blessing of understanding our limitations as well as our gifts is that we realize we need each other. We need people who can flourish within institutions as well as outside of them. We need people who can think in formulas and we need people who can think in stories. We need people who can play a cello in the midst of heartache and we need people who can paint the posters that remind the rest of us it is possible. Ultimately, we have no choice. We need each other."
and i think this is why i get so unhappy when people seem intolerant of other people's ideas. the world would be a much more painful and boring place to be if we all thought and did the same things. i think the only think the world needs to agree on is to treasure love and each other. selfishness and intolerance seems to me the crux of most of the evils out there.
pg 166:
"I wonder why it is that we so often imprison ourselves in the opinions of other people. There can be no punishment worse than conspiring in our own diminishment. Yet liberation, ultimately, i s a solitary and stubborn affair, requiring old-fashioned cussedness and much rehearsal."
pg 175:
"What are the environments, the ways of working, and who are the people that bring out the best in you? As a result of the fragmentation most of us have experiences, we have become more convinced of our separation than our connection. Thus, we don't really consider that the environmnet in which we work can determine whether or not it is ever possible for us to bring our gifts to the community."
pg 177:
"I'm sure he is walking for me now, months later, as I sit rocking in this cabin, thinking about what kind of environment I need in order to return to the world of needs and demands without losing myself or my sense of purpose. What are the conditions that will help me to be as I was with those thousand people, a part of the community, and yet apart from the community? How do I stay true to myself? How do I stay aligned with the natural rhythms that nurture my body and soul? How do I help create a community of connection rather than fragmentation? How do I live in a way that brings out the best of who I am?"
pg 178:
"If you took a blue spruce tree and planted it in the desert, it would quickly perish. How do we forget that we too are living systems, and each of us has unique environments, need and conditions within which we flourish or wither?"
"Like these fish, we've been accustomed to swimming in a limited environment, convinced that this is the only way we can survive. We don't have to accept the environments that have been given to us, however. We can give ourselves much more space to expand by asking what are the conditions that bring out the best in us."
what is my own limiting environment? i think it's my belief that i always have to be working. i lost myself in work trying to be a pre-med when i no longer had the heart in it. and now... even in art i feel the temptation to work to the point that i don't want what i've been chasing for.
i need to learn to just go from moment to moment. enjoying what i'm doing right now. to let go of my vise-like grip on the end goal and just relax a little more. enough to let my original passion and purpose come through and inspire me to advance to the next step, instead of my desire to finish yet another task on my to-do list.
pg 179:
"How can we support both our inner and outer lives? For so many of us, living with an external orientation has become a deeply ingrained habit. Our culture insists we compartmentalize our inner life, wall it off behind the technical skills necessary to magane 'out there.'"
pg 183:
"'Self-care is never a selfish act--it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others. Anytime we can listen to true self, and give it the care it requires, we do so not only for ourselves, but for the many others who lives we touch.'
- Parker Palmer"
pg 185:
"There's no part of creation that does not go through a cycle of growth, falling away, disappearing and reemerging. Think of a tree. Or the moon. Why should humans be the one aspect of life that is exempt from this cycle? Our pulse beats in varying rhythms, as all of nature's does. Why then do we move at only two speeds, fast or inert?"
pg 186:
"What if we could easily shed the known and habitual ways we think of ourselves in order to foster the things within that are in seed form and dormant? What if you gave yourself three days a month or three hours a day to allow everything you know about yourself to disappear, instead of assuming you are falling apart or clinically depressed? What if you broke trhough your mundane level of thinking and nested yourself in a rich, dark, regenerative soil, where you could be engaged in innocent inquiry with who you are and what you are becoming?"
"Most of us and our organizations still follow the old mythology, where we are thought of as perpetual motion machines, working at one speed--fast as can be, productive as possible--like stair-climbers in a gym, up, up, up, asking us to exert more effort but getting nowhere very quickly. Ascent, ascent, higher and higher. Never descent, never darkness or a plateau for regeneration."
this is kind of how i think this culture drives people to work. it makes sense for the survival and sustinence of the society as a whole, but it certainly doesn't account for individual casualties. this to me is what a rat race is.
"As a consequence, we becomes improsioned in our own rigidities. What if, instead, we realized, like Ram Dass, taht we go through many incarnations in this one life? What if we realized that instead of 'things' getting better and better if we work harder and harder, that, like a seed, we will each in our own rhtyhm, go through endless cycles of gestation, birth, growth, death, and renewal?"
pg 187:
"Like the rest of the natural world, human being go through seasons. At one point, we are in the full bloom of summer, harvesting, commmitted, in abundance. Then, naturally, there is an autumnal time of falling away, disillusionment, stagnation, a shedding of what has been used up. Then must come the fallowness and dormancy of winter, death, rest. Eventually, as is happening right outside the windows of this cabin, there is ag reat melting into muck and mud, which, if one can persevere, opens naturally into an abundant yellow-green time, when everything is possible and horizons open. Consider your own passion for a moment. Is it hiding under the softest fall of snow, or going through a raw shedding? And if your sense of purpose trembling with spring green or flaming in full harvest?"
maybe this is why i've been missing having four season so much. weather forces you to remember that you are part of the natural world. snow forces you to slow down. rain inspires you to huddle up in a blanket with a nice hot drink. with all the california sunshine, i wonder if it doesn't propel people to try to be bright and happy all the time.
pg 188:
"Understanding these cycles, you can come to recognize that when you are feeling disconnected from meaning and mystery, you're moving into fall. This is a signal to begin to turn inward, in order to harvest the wisdom of the last cycle and plant seeds for the next. Winter, or dormancy, can then be welcomed as a time of incubation, rather than stagnation. This natural process, if allowed to occur, fosters trust that the greening of purpose and passion will reermerge from this frozen ground, regenerating your desire to reach out and offer your renewed self."
pg 189:
"Each of us is a miracle of uniqueness. Each of us, therefore, is responsible for the discovery of our sustaining passions and rhythms, the cultivation of the green fields in which we can discover what keeps us connected to the full fertility of our soul and all it has to give to the world."
what does this mean to me? it means that when i get tired, i will try to take some time out for myself so that i feel rejuvenated and reminded of my passion and purpose. hopefully in this way, i can avoid burning myself out, which is a natural talent or drive i seem to have. :)