Tag: harmony

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News from Jules | 01.17.2022 | What Feels Right and True

one lesson about integrity every week

There were so many things I expected to come to fruition last year besides the dream of summiting Mt. Hood. Seeds that I thought I planted last March, nurtured through the summer, and anticipated harvesting in the fall. Just as I’d planned. So it came as a humble reminder to enter winter, the last season in our current growth cycle, and keep trying. 

Trying to start a family. Trying to find true love. Trying to make a living. Trying to write a book. 

Persistent dreams I committed to pursuing wholeheartedly last year. 

During my annual exam last January, 2021, I excitedly told my OBGYN that after years of deliberation I was ready to have a baby on my own. And, I also kept my heart open as I met a few potential soulmates during outdoor adventures throughout the year. I accepted getting laid off in July—at the same time as finally being debt-free—as an opportunity to reassess my callings. I set up a dedicated writing desk and dusted off my box of notecards, source texts, sparkly inspirational doodads. 

This was all happening throughout last year, subtly veiled beneath the catchy phrases and metaphors in my blog; the word choices and photos on Instagram. Known to those in my day-to-day, but not to all of you. 

Even when I wasn’t writing, I constantly debated with myself about what to share and the relevance to your lives: What is necessary and useful? What is inspiring? What is personal? What is private?

And, how would it all turn out? Would I jinx myself or close doors by sharing half-baked truths?

But, can the Universe really provide if I keep withholding my truth?  

Who knows?

These questions are beyond me. I can’t know what is going on in your life—just like you don’t know mine unless I tell you. You may not even know what is necessary, useful or inspiring for your journey, until you read it. What is too personal to know, until you feel it. 

And then you’ll decide to simply follow the pull of curiosity. Or not and stop reading.

The question I can answer: What feels right and true and whole to me?

My own words reminding me:

The world cannot be whole without all of you. 

I held these questions as fall became a season of healing after so much trying. A time to stop trying. To harvest health and balance. To nourish every part of my being with long hikes, strong workouts, good food, and honest storytelling. To study the natural rhythm. 

“Tying my family’s nutritional fortunes to the seasons…did acquaint us in new ways with what seasons mean, and how they matter,” wrote Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. “Especially, I’m coming to understand [my elder] culture’s special regard for winter. It’s the season to come through.” 

And so, I entered the winter solstice a month ago lighter and ready to let go of what isn’t serving me: control, planning, permanence, opacity.

Instead, I am transparently surrendering to this Season of life, and inviting you along. 

I am sharing more of the actual everyday journey toward integrity. Not waiting for how “it all turns out” and what it meant based on “what I know now.” I am still trying for the right mix of personal but not private, relatable yet specific. Necessary, useful, inspiring for you—and for me as I make sense of it as I go. 

Here we are. 

This quiet time to come through, together. 

May you come through this week.  

Love,
Jules

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News from Jules | 07.16.2021 | If You Go First

one lesson about integrity every week

Caught up in my thoughts about everything that had happened in the previous week, I wasn’t really paying attention to where I was. The brown sand and low bushes had quickly turned to rolling green fields as I traveled from the Central Oregon desert back toward the Cascades mountain range earlier this week.

As I cruised along, I looked over my shoulder to the left. Noticing Mt. Hood it hit me:

Whoa, I’ve climbed that. 

I scanned the horizon. As I looked toward my right and noticed Mt. Adams over in Washington it hit me: Whoa, I climbed that too…last weekend. Even though I’d just stood near or at the highest points of these peaks—including all 12,281 feet of Mt. Adams and 1,000 feet higher than Mt. Hood—from afar they both seemed insurmountable. 

Like a dream. And yet, a dream that I lived step by step. Breath by breath. Choice by choice. The mountains patiently waiting for me to come to them. 

If I go first. 

Mt. Adams was my third climb in a month, but it felt like my first real summit. After five hours of hiking and climbing with a 35-pound pack at our leisurely pace the day before, my climbing partner and I camped at 9,300 feet to acclimatize before the next day’s ascent. We intentionally set out “late” around 7 a.m. the next morning so that the snow would be softer and less icy on our descent later that afternoon. We immediately put on our crampons and helmets and headed straight up for the next five hours.

For each “You got this, girl” pushing me through a tough spot, I reminded myself to stop and look around. Look down to face the fear. Look out to see the beauty. The vast expanse of land off into the horizon—rolling hills like waves under the drifting clouds—continued to take my breath away. It was a different ocean than I’d ever seen before.

Usually, I sprint to the finish. No matter what I tap into a hidden reserve of adrenaline and speed. I finish strong. But as we came around the bend into the last 200 feet from the top, literally a stone’s throw away, everything started slowing down.

My steps. My breath. My mind. Can I do this?

The doubt came out of nowhere. Affirming itself and avoiding the present, my mind flashed back to my first half-marathon: When I felt like I was going to fall apart and started walking around mile 10. But, then as I rounded the bend I saw my brother and sister-in-law cheering me on, so I quickly started running again to not disappoint them. But, that was the past. And it wasn’t helpful. What was I moving toward?

Living into my fullest potential as a human.

Like in a slow-motion dream, I watched visions of the future: family, kids, writing, teaching, retreating, being. I felt all the sensations of being humbly, vulnerably, courageously so very human. 

And as I took the final steps to the very top, it all washed over me with warm, happy tears. 

I was standing exactly where my parents stood when I was just a speck of potential. Even though my family wasn’t there, I knew they were cheering me on from afar. Like they always have. Not to accomplish goals. But to live into my dreams. Even if they couldn’t understand. 

I savored the summit, sending bubbles of joy off in the wind before I carried this truth with me from all the way atop Mt. Adams down toward sea level and back to reality. 

Spending five days with the fluidity of the ocean and the stability of the mountain was exactly the grounding I needed to be fully present throughout the last two weeks. Driving back from an amazing weekend in Bend, I returned to wrap up my last week of work at this company. ​It’s growing fast, but not fast enough to require a full-time Learning & Development Manager.  

So, today is my last day and I am among the unemployed masses once again. One of the lucky who will receive unemployment insurance benefits and still has group healthcare coverage. 

Of course, the narrative arc is not lost on me: coming full circle to where I was a year ago when I started blogging again. 

Every week for the last 52 weeks I have sent a TinyLetter to y’all—plus and minus a few readers. That wasn’t actually the goal when I started writing again last July 20, 2021. It was simply to Carpe Diem.

And I did seize the day.

It kept me going this extraordinary past year to send these weekly updates as I processed life and shared what I discovered. I love being connected to each of you. Knowing you’re cheering me on in my journey. And as you’re navigating your own journey—whenever the subject line draws you in and wherever the words find you. 

So, I’ll keep writing eventually and we’ll stay connected. 

I’ll keep posting beautiful moments in relationships, sports, travel, nature, life on Instagram. 

Initially, I’m taking a two-week break to reset my reality. Most of which will be outdoors and offline. And, then I may come back to weekly posts or perhaps at a different or random cadence or I may switch to editing. I’m not sure. 

Right now, I am leaning deeply into the unknown. 

As my Yogi tea bags keep telling me: The unknown is where all possibilities lie. 

Where anything is possible. 

Where everything is possible. 

May you go first this week. 

Love,
Jules

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News from Jules | 07.05.2021 | Saying Yes to One Thing

one lesson about integrity every week

I could feel it all week. Having spent so much time in the mountains lately, I needed to get back to sea level.

Without anywhere in particular in mind, I scanned the Oregon coastline on Google Maps. I only had Thursday night before my next climbing trip over the weekend, so I needed to stay close to Portland. Nothing jumped off the map until I moved up to Washington. Long Beach caught my eye. It was that kooky little town on my bucket list discovered while facilitating a retreat nearby a few summers ago. 

The closest campground was at Cape Disappointment State Park. I’d never been there! 

Or had I been there too many times to count—figuratively that is? Is it possible to live life to the fullest without having hopes or expectations?

One of the many things I was wondering as I set out on this brief personal retreat. 

As soon as I parked, smelled the salt air and discovered the tiny trail directly from my campsite to the beach, I knew: This was exactly where I needed to be.

As if I had planned it long ago, instead of the night before. 

As I sunk my bare feet into the sand and scanned the beach, my first inclination was to explore the caverns and shoreline of this place I’d never been to until sunset. Getting to know every inch of it. Seeing everything. My curiosity always steering the course. Yet, this wasn’t what had drawn me to the coast. 

I needed to just sit there. 

Three steps and four drift logs from where I emerged. 

Just me, Grandmother Ocean and all the feelings of doubt and insecurity about ever living into my fullest potential as a human. Potential recently tapped into during peak experiences, but not yet amidst my day-to-day. Bringing forth everything I have been gifted to offer the world: family, kids, writing, teaching, retreating, being. 

Simply being. 

Amidst all the doing, could our being be all that’s asked of us?

So simple. Yet so immense. I still can’t wrap my head around it.

Saying yes to one thing and no to everything else. 

Yes to being right here, right now, in whatever this moment holds. 

Like the waves lapping on the shore. The birds flying overhead. The lighthouse on the cliff, constantly turning to spread its light. 

Can just being lead me to everything I’m drawn to? Do I need to do anything? Besides showing up?

I sat there smoking a cigar until the sky, waves and beach turned the same shade of grey and there was no one else on the beach. Just me, Grandmother Ocean and all the sensations of being humbly, vulnerably, courageously so very human. 

I carried this truth with me from sea level all the way up Mt. Adams, where I camped 24 hours later beside a different ocean than I’d ever seen before. 

May you say yes to being this week.

Love,
Jules

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News from Jules | 06.28.2021 | Row Your Own Way

one lesson about integrity every week

Once my eyes opened I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I quickly changed into shorts and a sweatshirt, grabbed a life jacket and an oar and set off toward the lake. 

It seemed like everyone in the entire campground was still asleep. And the throngs of visitors had yet to arrive. 

With a record-breaking heatwave rolling into the Pacific Northwest over the weekend, everyone had the same idea to head toward the mountain. At the last minute, my plans changed from climbing South Sister with friends in Central Oregon to joining other friends on their family campout.

As soon as we got set up on Friday night, we brought the canoe and standup paddleboards (SUP) down to the water for a sunset row. I wondered how magical the sunrise on the lake would be.

The next day the lake was bustling like the waterways of Venice: SUPs, canoes, dinghies, rafts, inner tubes, even household air mattresses. People everywhere. Voices carrying across the water, everyone commenting, “I’ve never seen this many people on Trillium Lake before!” 

At 6:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, it was just me and the actual early birds chirping away. 

As I walked the boardwalk and the perimeter trail to where we’d left the canoe, it hit me:

Can you row a canoe by yourself? Or does it take two people? I had no idea. I realized I’d never rowed a canoe solo before. I could turn around and give up. Or I could try it. 

Why not?

Once I found it amongst the bushes, I turned the canoe over and pushed it away from the grassy shore. 

Would it even work with only one oar? Yes. 

Or would I just go in circles? No. 

Even if it’s backward apparently. Defying logic, I learned later that the bigger seat is actually the front and the smaller seat goes in the back. Huh, good to know!  

I sliced through the still water, alternating a few strokes on each side of the canoe. Stopping every few minutes to take photos of one magical moment after another: the sun peeking through the treeline, the yellow flower buds peeking through the lily pads, the tree stumps jutting out of the middle of the lake, the shadows moving across the mountain’s glaciers. All reflected back on the still water. 

Thoughts buzzed past just like the dragonflies, connecting this moment with past moments. Instead of dwelling on the random thoughts or making meaning, I simply smiled. 

The actual dragonflies excitedly mating over the lily pads were much more interesting. 

A gaggle buzzed over to me, some pairs hit the side of the canoe with a thud, bounced off and kept flying. 

It was more than magic. 

This was living in harmony with nature. Living in harmony with my nature. 

Fleetwood Mac had it right: Go your own way. Row your own way. 

The risk: Figuring it out on one’s own. 

The reward: Getting to witness the beginning of a new day.

May you go your own way this week. 

Love,
Jules

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News from Jules | 02.15.2021 | Being in Love

one lesson about integrity every week

It was a good thing that I made a last-minute run to my PO Box on Wednesday before the snow arrived. Inside there was a red envelope from the Research Triangle Region addressed to Jules Williams and Forever stamped with Love. 

It was sealed with a sticker of an apple with googly eyes, a smile and legs, but no arms. Why would an apple need arms?? 

That was enough to tickle my heart for days. 

Of course, I waited until Sunday and then opened my Valentine. A little fox in raincoat and galoshes standing outside on a clear night full of stars, holding a balloon of the moon. A tiny heart above his head. “To the moon and back!” it said.

Golly gee willickers! Even after 21 years of love notes with a favorite friend, these words hold the same magic: Dear Jules. I love you!  

It’s not the actual words that are so nourishing. It’s the truth beneath them—being seen, enjoyed and acknowledged, simply for being. And when it is mutually shared, mutually reflected, it lights everything up. 

Perhaps that’s what we love so much about loving others?

So often conflated with romance, it’s easy to forget our lives are filled with true love. True because it is pure, undiluted, 100 percent. So close to feeling perfect it easily gets confused with flawless. Love because it is a distinct sensation—a combination of like, joy, happy and delight—that is universal and inexplicable.

For years, I have tried to put the sensation into words. Not in sonnets, but in lists. No surprise, I’ve studied everything I love that generates this sensation—it’s a long list—with surprisingly more places, things and experiences than people. The best synonym I’ve come up with is: favorite. 

Junior Mints, pugs, art museums, the ocean, libraries, Mt. Hood, best friends, getting mail, sending mail, postcards, collecting things, organizing things, making things (or making things from organizing collections of postcards a la 100 Days Post Love, a silly blog I made in 2013 of love notes to 100 people). Just to name a few. 

I love being in love! So, I fill my life with as many of my favorites as possible. 

Not just for a day. I’m convinced that we could spend most of our waking hours enraptured in its glow, with the occasional break for a necessary moment of fear, hurt or boredom. We are human after all. 

Some years Valentines’ Day can feel silly, excessive and/or unnecessary.

But, this year—as we near the anniversary of life turning upside down from COVID-19 etc.—thank goodness for a whole day dedicated to reminding us of how good it feels being in love…whether or not there is a sweetheart in particular. 

May you fill your life with favorites this week and every day after. 

Love,
Jules

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News from Jules | 02.08.2021 | Getting Everything You Need

one lesson about integrity every week

Even with a worksheet in hand and three weeks into the course, I had the hardest time finding the words for my needs. Not the needs that come with obvious feelings like hungry or tired. But the more subtle needs. Like being heard or seen. Just as important though, constantly guiding our daily choices and habits that steer the bigger decisions. 

During this five-week course, I’m learning the practice of Nonviolent Communication, also known as Compassionate Communication, created by Marshall Rosenberg, a psychologist who made the link back in the 1960’s between observations, feelings, needs and requests as a way “to authentically connect to another human being.” 

I thought feelings and needs were simple. Geez, was I wrong. 

I guess feelings and needs are simple if you’re only counting the basic ones. 

But dig a little deeper, into the layer of known, but unnamed, psychological needs like security and self-expression and acceptance, and it sure gets complicated quickly. And that’s just one person’s needs! As soon as another person is added, then there’s instantly competing needs. Especially in less collective, more individually-minded cultures. 

And this is where we find a deep, troublesome and pervasive struggle. 

Whose needs are more important?

I faced this question head-on last December, when the COVID-19 case numbers surging up the charts after Thanksgiving looked more like a tsunami than a third wave. The Center for Disease Control revised recommendations for masks on all the time—inside or outside. 

Several weeks into living alone, I decided to avoid being indoors with people anywhere, including quick trips to the grocery store. I logged into Instacart and submitted my first grocery delivery order. 

Later in the afternoon the next day, my phone started vibrating with texts from the shopper: Would this [other organic, fake cheese brand] work instead?  The six-pack of beer I selected was sold out and couldn’t be substituted. Sad face.

We texted back and forth for 55-minutes while I was in a Zoom work meeting and she navigated the store to find everything on my list. 

Once I got the “I’m here” text, I grabbed my mask, put on my slippers, then ran down from the fifth floor to meet her out front. As she came around the driver’s side to open the trunk of the Ford Explorer, I saw this beautiful African American woman, twice as big as me, with a pink sequinned mask. I smiled. Now that’s my kinda style!

After a quick “Thank you” from six-feet apart, I gathered up the half-dozen grocery bags and waddled back into my apartment building. As I press the button for the elevator and stood there in the hallway, it hit me.

Wait a second. I simultaneously realized what just happened—what I just saw on the curb and had transpired over the last hour over text. I couldn’t yet name my feelings, but I knew something wasn’t right. 

Just like in March as I came to my first epiphany of the pandemic, this defining moment was just as subtle of a wake-up call.

Slowly, I connected my observations with my feelings. And then with my needs. And then her needs. 

I was concerned and worried.

Why was this woman—in one of the highest risk groups for potentially multiple reasons—spending hours exposed to others, so that I—in one of the lowest risk groups—could stay safe at home? 

Yes, I needed safety and nourishment, hence delivery and groceries. And yes, she needed nourishment, perhaps that’s why she had that job. But, what about her need for safety?

What the heck? I should be doing her grocery shopping! 

That was the one and only grocery delivery I did.

These defining moments—on my front porch and with Instacart—keep echoing, reminding me how this deep, troublesome and pervasive struggle touches every part of our lives. Because of the way we currently live, we are in a constant state of competing needs.

And the struggle to get our needs met is vulnerable. Especially when we can’t name them. We’re doing the best we can. And, this constant, collective vulnerability—not just some of us, all of us—is the opening. 

An opening for all of us to grow, together. 

We can take care of our needs and meet the needs of all. I know we can. 

It starts with practice: noticing, sensing, naming and relating.

Authentically, selflessly, compassionately. 

May you get everything you need this week. 

Love,
Jules

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News from Jules | 01.25.2021 | Being Present Together

one lesson about integrity every week

Given all the emotions of the day, it was hard to tell where my nerves were coming from. As I took a deep in-breath, signing off one Zoom call, and immediately signed into a new Zoom call with a deep out-breath, I was calm and excited. 

One by one faces appeared until 14 coworkers sat with me, patiently waiting, expectant of a 15-minute zen break in the middle of their “hump” day. And not just any hump day: Inauguration Day.

1-2-3 all eyes on me. 

The smallest atom of what Amanda Gorman must have felt earlier that day. And yet, the universal feeling of doing a first: “something you’ve never done before.”

Leading my first meditation sitting—a discipline I had only started practicing daily in the past few weeks. Just the beginning. 

But was it?

Perhaps the beginning of my practice, yet a discipline sprinkled throughout my personal development journey over the past 15 years. 

I took a deep in-breath, drawing in all that had lead to this moment, and then released my fear to the universe, with a deep out-breath.

“As you settle into this moment, simply focus on being in your body. This is the only place you need to be. This is presence.”

Just as I had practiced a few days before on my own, we began with a reading from Julia Cameron’s Heart Steps: Prayers and Declarations for a Creative Life:

My true nature is the experience of unity. All separation is fear. All fear is illusion. We forget that we are one…In our unity, we are one people, one earth, one song. Each of us sings a True Note.

We were not synchronized. We were not identical. We were 15 different bodies sitting in our own posture, with our own breaths, with our own sensations, feelings, thoughts. In 15 different places. 

And yet, we were one. All focused on the same goal: being present together. 

Just as so many millions had sat hours before mesmerized by the poetry of the day. The start of the next era. A new beginning. 

But was it?

As if there was a giant switch that simply needed to be flipped. On or off. Ending to beginning. Old to new. Release to receive. 

As if transformation happens like that. Instead of a slow fade like a light dimmer. Or better yet like the sun—in constant rotation and degree of brightness.

The 15-minute sitting came to an end.

Together, we took a deep in-breath of accomplishment and then a deep out-breath of humility. 

Present in the process.

May you stay the course in your evolution this week.

Love,
Jules

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News from Jules | 12.28.2020 | This is the Next Level

one lesson about integrity every week

Yes, we are on the cusp of a new year—2021—yet none of our crises will disappear when the clock strikes 12:01 a.m. on New Year’s Day. And none of them are actually related to 2020 either, but confining uncontrollable events to a timeframe is an easier way to manage stress and history. Or so it seems. 

Just like denial seems easier. And ignoring seems easier. 

Until it’s not. 

Until we’re in a precarious position: deep in a crisis without even knowing it.  

The defining moment of this year for me was one of the most subtle wake-up calls I’ve experienced. 

I walked outside after my lunch and sat down on the cement porch dangling my bare feet off the edge. It was cold, uncomfortable, but it kept me alert. I took in the eery stillness of the neighborhood. As if it was just another weekday. 

It was unusually quiet outside. No cars racing toward the busy intersection a block and a half down the street. No walkers briskly passing by deep in conversation. No wind through the still bare trees. Spring had barely sprung and everyone barely knew what had just begun. During those first few weeks of Shelter-in-Place, people were at home waiting. Waiting for it to pass, as if it were just a storm.

A brief “unprecedented” interruption of what we thought was normal life. Instead of an inevitable crisis at worst, a disruptive catalyst at best. 

As I sat there, my questions and thoughts began to organize themselves in the quiet nothingness, just like when I hike in the forest or walk along the beach. After a weekend of internet research, I digested the information I had gathered from the news and attempted to make sense of it. 

Only a few weeks into the pandemic and it was clear: The world was in a crisis. Surprisingly, we had been for months. Meanwhile, we went about our lives business-as-usual. 

  • The virus was actually reported in December. 
  • I went on a retreat at a house with 25 women during the last weekend of February. Oregon’s first COVID-19 case was reported on February 28.
  • Oregon’s State of Emergency was declared on March 8. I went to work with thousands of people until March 13.
  • The economists said a recession was unlikely and not to worry until “people stopped getting haircuts.” Well, the barbershops had already closed. 

Yet, as I looked around the neighborhood, everything looked the same as before. The grass continued growing, the clouds coasted overhead, a bird chirped from afar—the world seemed okay. But, I knew it wasn’t. I knew the threat was real, I just couldn’t see it. I couldn’t feel it—no cortisol, no fear. 

This is when the epiphany hit: How was this invisible viral threat any different than the climate crisis we have been complacently living amidst my entire life, an entire century?

It wasn’t.

Insert systemic racism, wealth inequality, the current presidency. The world seemed okay. But it wasn’t. 

The evidence was clear. Even if I didn’t personally see it, feel it, in my world.  

Did I have the courage to pay attention and act accordingly?

I lost my naivete that day. But, I didn’t lose my faith. 

If anything, this epiphany helped orient me for the rest of the year. I stayed grounded in reality, in responsibility, in service, in sacrifice. I was activated by the truth beyond what I could see and beyond what directly touched my life. To trust what is unseen, but known. To put the greater good first. To contribute, not to extract.

We can transcend this idea of a static normal and live in harmony with dynamic nature. I know we can. 

This is the next level. Ironically, growing my personal threshold for vulnerability over the last few years allowed me to feel compassion for everyone else. 

This constant, collective vulnerability—not just some of us, all of us—is the opening. 

To more experience, deeper wisdom and better judgment.

To change spurred by truth. 

To adaptability. 

To being humble.

To being human. 

May you carry the truth forward this week. 

Love,
Jules

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News from Jules | 12.14.20 | Getting Everything You Want

one lesson about integrity every week

I thought I bought a Yin Yang sticker on Etsy, but when it arrived, I realized it was a decal—meant for a car, not for paper. Oops. The black side was actually white and the typically white side, well, didn’t exist. Double oops. 

I wanted to cover up some random text inside a circle on the cover of my journal. It was regifted from a best friend, as I recall a find from her previous San Francisco China Town thrifting days. A circular Yin Yang symbol seemed perfect to represent this year’s theme: Balance. 

But would the decal even attach? First, I needed something to go underneath.

My sticky fingers smooshed the tissue paper so that it wrinkled, no longer smooth but textured like paper pulp with flecks of gold leaf, which made the text beneath illegible. ​Then, holding my breath, I peeled back the two sides of the decal and slowly adhered the Yang and narrow outline of the Yin sides. The faded journal immediately went from dingy to delightful. I found two rhinestones randomly in my craft basket and stuck one on each of the elephant’s foreheads as a bindi. It was b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l! 

When first gifted the journal, I totally judged it by the cover. Then by its square shape. It did not look like my favorite journals at all. I considered Goodwill. But, the thought did count and I put it in with my extra office supplies. 

Everybody knows I love to write and reflect. Most people know I’ve journaled since I was 15 years old. 

So I have received hundreds of diaries, journals and notebooks in my lifetime. Most of which I never used. Some went in my office supplies crate to maybe use someday, many were regifted, the rest sadly went to Goodwill. 

I have a very specific size, cover, lined width, weight of paper and brand that I prefer.

So when I finished the last page of my favorite journal during my first year of Buy Nothing in 2016, I had an “Oh sugar” moment. Would I go months until the end of the year without journaling, without writing anything? 

The unthinkable became the inevitable. I used one of the journals I already had. The first of several since I continued Buy Nothing for three more years (from 2016 to 2019). A poignant lesson about one’s perception of scarcity because only one exact thing will do. When in reality there’s often abundance all around us. And all that’s even needed is sufficiency. 

Around the time last summer that my most recent journal was running out, I received the square one from my bestie.

Just when I needed one! 

The universe provides. 

And I used it, even though I still didn’t like the cover.  

Last weekend, as I admired the newly embellished journal, I realized there were only 15 pages left. Oh no! It was too beautiful to be finished. My first thought was to not write, to save the paper, to make it last longer.

I felt attached.

But in clinging to it, I would deprive myself of doing something I love, of joy, of self-care. 

The irony made me laugh. It was too perfect. Nonattachment is one of the many lessons about Balance that I need to learn this growth cycle. 

I thought attachment meant literally being attached—the grasping for, the clinging to—so nonattachment just meant NOT being attached. But when I looked up the Buddhist meaning, it was actually about desire. Not wanting things at all. 

Because desire causes suffering. 

I have come a long way in my relationship to money, to stuff, to resources, to other people, to myself, but this is hard to imagine. Not wanting anything, not needing anything at all?

What if it’s not the wanting that causes suffering? What if it’s the rejecting, the not receiving what’s actually being provided, that causes suffering?

The unmet need or want that festers. 

Instead, letting needs and wants be met, fulfilled, satisfied.

Getting everything you want. Everything you need. 

And if not, letting it go. 

Once again, in balance with what is. 

Maybe that’s nonattachment. 

May you allow all of your needs to be met this week. 

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 

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News from Jules | 11.23.20 | It’s the Little Things

one lesson about integrity every week

Until I saw them shivering in the rain outside of my apartment building last week, it hadn’t really hit me that I wouldn’t see them on Thanksgiving. 

My nephew and nieces ran from my sister toward me in their galoshes, raincoats and facemasks to announce why they had stopped by. They handed me a pink gift bag with gold sparkly tissue paper. Inside there was a Mason jar with a votive candle, covered with red- and yellow-shaped leaves and more gold sparkly tissue paper. The kids wrote on tags tied to the candle with a ribbon: “We’re really grateful for you. Light this candle and know that we are with you in spirt.” 

Of course, I cried after they left. 

Both for the deeply meaningful gesture and for the reality. 

For the unwanted distance from those whom we hold dear. 

Those that bring meaning to our traditions. To traditions that bring order to our constantly changing lives. To order that gives us something to look forward to. Though can also get us stuck in the past and out of the present. 

“This year, I haven’t really been looking forward to Christmas and the Holidays with much anticipation or interest.”

Sound familiar?

I actually wrote that right after Thanksgiving, way back in 2013. It was in a post on one of my very first blogs—the adorable first generation of Everyday Integrity—that I forgot about until the other day. 

Then, as now, one of my best friends and I were struggling to get into the holiday spirit. So, I wrote an Advent Series of blog posts—one every day until Christmas as a gift for her. Each post had something special about this time of year. An ode to the little things. A new link to open each morning. 

That commitment keep me present all holiday season long.

Each day I needed to find the holiday spirit in the world around me. Some days I literally ran into Mrs. Claus in the grocery store. Other days it was a s-t-r-e-t-c-h. It truly turned into the gift that kept on giving. Almost more for me than for my best friend. 

It helped me see past all of the shopping-buying-wrapping-shipping-traveling-cooking-overeating-drinking stress, to get back to the Tiny Tim essence of the holiday spirit. The generosity, the magic, the love, the little things. 

Like a handmade candle to be with my family in spirit this Thanksgiving. Or the email from my dad the other day, Subject: “Merry Xmas,” with a year’s subscription to The New York Times. 

What would Tiny Tim say about this year—staying a crutch length away from everyone, if together at all during the holidays? These holy days of dark winter.

“God bless us, every one!” 

May you cherish all the little things this week. 

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 

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