The Growing Armoury
- devabritow
- 11 minutes ago
- 6 min read
I wanted to write a little more about serendipity this week. You know, the experience of unexpectedly discovering something valuable and/or pleasant when you weren't actively looking for it. It's such a beautiful word - certainly one of my favourites.
Last week, for the first time since buying it in May this year, my post We All Journey Alone Together focused on an excerpt from Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening. It is a beautiful book and I'm really glad that I finally picked it up. What's serendipitous about all this is that while driving to work on Thursday, I opened The Mel Robbins Podcast and lo and behold, the first episode my eyes landed on was The Exact Words You Need to Hear Today if You're Feeling Stuck. Her featured guest was Mark Nepo.
"My job, whether it's in writing or teaching, my calling is to open a heart space that we can enter together. And in that heart space, we start to discover that we're more together than alone."
The flow of that single excerpt I focused on last week to the quote above (from The Mel Robbins Podcast) is perfect (unsurprisingly, given it's the same author). I don't plan how I listen to podcasts. On any given morning, I open one of the regular shows I listen to and pick an episode. In this instance, I was drawn in by the title, and it was only as I started listening that I discovered that Robbins' guest was Mark Nepo. I loved that the excerpt and (some of what) the podcast covered were so similar to me. It felt almost deliberate, were it not for the fact that it happened by chance.
Spoiled for Choice
There are so many things I could focus on from The Exact Words You Need to Hear Today if You're Feeling Stuck. I was excited to see a reference to something that I read in the book I'm not quite ready to write about, so that's something for another day. It is, however, yet another example of serendipity in play. I wasn't expecting to make a connection to that book during the podcast, but there you have it. At this point, the crossover and similarities in these books, podcasts and other texts shouldn't surprise me. The occurrences are just too frequent.
As a child, I would only eat vanilla ice cream—no other flavour appealed to me. Not even chocolate. And don't get me started on sprinkles. I did not need that on my perfectly adequate vanilla cone. With age came a little more adventure, of course, and now I love variety - especially when it comes to what I feed my mind. With this week's episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast, I was spoiled for choice - uncertain at the time of listening, what I would focus on. Ultimately, among all the resonant topics covered in Robbins' conversation with Mark Nepo, I latched onto a segment about finding meaning even in the toughest of times.
"Remember that your natural state is joy." (Wayne Dyer)
I posted the above quote on Facebook many years ago and have used it as my profile picture from time to time. I really love it when the quote pops up in my memories because it's a good reminder to connect with that innate joy he talks about. In my experience, happiness leads to increased positivity, a sense of upliftment, the feeling that things are going to be okay, that you'll always prevail, and that there's nothing you can't conquer. The same can't be said of tough times.
"How to Find Meaning in Hard Times"
Challenging life experiences often fling us off course. Death, divorce, financial trouble, work issues, inharmonious relationships, severe trauma and even politics - you name it, we can become derailed by life's vicissitudes. Recovering from certain life events can take years. When mental health issues are thrown into the mix as well, it can make for abject misery, a feeling of being trapped by those circumstances and difficulty reining in one's emotions. From melancholy to panic attacks and worse, correcting one's course can seem like an impossibility, and that, in itself, perpetuates the hard times.
The transcripts from The Mel Robbins Podcast include headings, which are great for blogging, and the episode featured in this week's blog is titled How to Find Meaning in Hard Times. And Mark Nepo knows a little bit about hard times.
A poet, spiritual teacher, and bestselling author, Nepo is renowned for his gentle and contemplative writings on the inner life, presence, healing, and the resilience of the human spirit. His work integrates poetry, philosophy, and personal experience, all of which were significantly shaped by his battle with cancer in his thirties. The illness deeply impacted his perspectives on gratitude, vulnerability, and awakening, and The Book of Awakening focuses on facing life's challenges with presence, courage and compassion.
"The best way out is always through." (Robert Frost)
So many of the writers I have learned from over the course of this journey have gone through incredibly challenging periods, but they all appear to have drawn from those challenges and found deeper meaning.
In his talk with Robbins and her husband, Chris, Mark Nepo details his experience with cancer. He speaks about the potentially transformative nature of struggle, and while people find opportunity to transform in various ways, for him, it was his experience with the disease. Amid the difficulty and fear, he says that "I had to drop under the pain, the fear, the worry, again, not to run from it, but to access something larger than me". For many people, this "larger" thing is religion or spirituality. For Nepo, while raised in Jewish traditions and beliefs, he says that he became "a student of all paths... and that's informed all my books, all my teaching".
"All Roads Lead to Rome"
I love Nepo's point about embracing all types of paths because there isn't a 'one-size-fits-all' approach to healing. There are certainly similarities, as I have pointed out before, but there is no single correct method for self-help, and besides, the destination is what's important. With this blog, I feel like I'm a student of all paths too, learning about different approaches, but not yet sure which one will lead me to Rome.
"I think two questions, nonjudgmental questions that I find myself asking both loved ones and students and people I'm with, especially people who are struggling is what's it like to be you right now? What's it like to be you? And the other is what do you care about?"
What's it like to be me? Well, I am flawed and incomplete. If I weren't, I don't think I'd be writing this blog. I don't think I'd have taken such a deep dive into self-help and mindfulness to transcend some of my life experiences. With these books, this writing exercise, I'm taking Robert Frost's advice and trying to break through.
I learned recently that the word "serendipity" is linked to the "happy accident phenomenon" popularised by the artist Bob Ross, and the phenomenon is about embracing one's mistakes and viewing unexpected events as windows of opportunity for discovery and creativity. In my post, Existential Frustration, I wrote about the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which submits that beauty is found in the transient, ever-changing and imperfect aspects of our lives. Rather than seeking beauty in perfection, we should appreciate it in things that are flawed and incomplete. I learned about wabi sabi in the book by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life, and it made me think (and write) about kintsugi, another Japanese concept that encourages acceptance, authenticity, and growth through challenges—key principles also embodied in the concept of ikigai.
So, with all of this literature, the podcasts, magazines and poems, my self-help armoury is growing. In the face of all of this knowledge, what do I care about?
Eudaimonia
This is another of my favourite words. It means a state of flourishing, living a life of meaning and purpose, aspiring to achieve one's full potential. To transcend temporary happiness and find a deeper, more enduring state. Aristotle linked it to a life of action, one led by reason, virtue, and wisdom.
Meaning. Purpose. A life of action. I care about all of this and more because I believe that it will lead me to that transcendent state beyond the temporary. A state of flourishing, a deeper, more enduring state. But I don't just want it for myself. What I care about is the shared uphill battle fought by so many other people, and I want to walk alongside them, sharing what I know in the hope that it will help them transcend, too.
Random Quote
"To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see overall patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings." (Oliver Sacks)
#anxiety #depression #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #wellness #selfcare #youarenotalone #thereisnostigma #mindfulness
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