take a walk... but with a receptive heart
open your eyes, but like REALLY open them. open that mind too.
how do you walk around in your day to day?
When I first moved to NYC in 2002, I hated it. Like, I truly f*cking HATED everything about it. It smelled of piss and garbage. The streets and sidewalks were filthy with litter and dried black bubblegum, flattening into coins. The people were rude and aggressive and no one smiled. It really bothered me that no one smiled.
Now, I can see that some part of me was choosing to focus on the negative. I hadn’t wanted to leave Texas. I didn’t want to leave being my found family and friends. So when I got to NYC, I focused on the arenas in which it lacked, rather than in the arena in which it excelled.
After four or five, I had begun to re-envision it, to see the city that never sleeps through a new lens. When the leaves turned orange or the the first snow fell, the city was blanketed in beauty. Buildings all around me, created through human ingenuity, reached toward the sky, like flowers rising from the concrete soil. And the people weren’t cruel or rude, they were simply determined. They had places to be, things to do. Like me, they had come from all corners of the nation and the globe, leaving behind their loved ones to pursue their dreams.
Though, I always made sure to smile. (Cuz that’s what Thich Nhat Hanh suggested we do in all of his books, which I devoured like popcorn on movie night.)
you have a choice on how you view your day.
You can look around, and focus on what isn’t there, rather than what is. As my abuela always told me—though I never truly understood it until last year—you can choose to have a good day or a bad day, it is a choice.
And no, it’s not as simple as saying, “I’m going to have a good day!” when you wake up. Cuz there have been plenty of times when I have walked out of my house and a bird has immediately shit on my new shirt. But rather than say, “The universe has shit on me once again, today is going to suck,” REFRAME IT. “That bird shit on me and saved my life! I mean, now I have to go change and I won’t get by that bus like I was supposed to. Thanks, bird shit!”
Reframing how your brain and your heart look at things requires work. A LOT OF WORK. I have the luxury of waxing buddha poetic now, but only because I spent the last four decades in the throes of trauma. It took a long time for me to get here, so I’m hoping I can help you get here a little faster.
So I’m going to give you a little taste of how I look at the world on my morning walk. I’m not taking my sweet Toby out to piss and take a shit… no, I’m spending time with my best furry friend while I slowly wake up to what is going to be a good day…
nature
Nature is rad. Because I live in a city, Los Angeles, it requires effort to remind myself to look at the plants as often as I come across them. But sometimes, if I just stop and stare, my brain tries to consider a plant’s growth from seedling to giant.
art & ads (& other messaging)
It just occurred to me that my living off one of the biggest streets in LA is the opposite of someone who lives in closer proximity to nature. So while some—perhaps those of you who live in urban areas—are surrounded by nature, I am surrounded by the flourishes of street artists, their graffiti’d creations, and advertisements—both small/local and big/global.
The above is an old laundromat owned by an old man who has been here for fifty years but is smart enough to truly OVERCHARGE me when I ask for pants to be hemmed. I love the simplicity of the painted signage, which says exactly what it needs to. But note what stands above it: a Jamba Juice billboard making a statement about socioeconomic status in this city.
Down the street is an EREWHON, the most expensive grocery store I’ve ever been in. (I cannot afford to shop there. But I’ve been in twice, once for curiosity, and once because I was super sick and desperately needed chicken soup… which I recall paying like $30 for.). And Erewhon has a $20 smoothie that tourists and tik-tok’ers are obssessed with: the Hailey Bieber smoothie.
I assumed Hailey Bieber was like a famous chef or athlete or maybe a yoga instructor on social media. Then someone told me she was Justin Bieber’s wife. I was like, “Yeah, but what else? What is she famous for?” I googled her and she is defined as a “model and socialite”.
I don’t get it. Why does she have a smoothie named after her? Is she a health guru? Did she make up the recipe? Are her toe nail clippings in it? Does she spit in every cup? Truly, it is beyond me. I don’t want to judge, but I am not a fan of those who want to worship celebrity.
(You know who I consider rockstars? Teachers and librarians and nurses, the people on the front lines, trying to make the world a better place through service for little pay and little respect. They work hard, and thus are deserving of respect. Just sayin’.)
pride & history
the miscellaneous
advice
If you haven’t read Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, I recommend you drop what you’re doing and call your local indie bookstore now. I read this book ages ago and its Toltec wisdom helped me become a more zen person. My abuela had already taught me to always do my best, and the first came naturally because I was obsessed with the english language and telling stories. But not making assumptions and now taking things personally? It’s hard. Really hard.
But when you stop caring what other people thing about you? Oof. Things get so much easier.
So having this scrawled on the side of an electric box for a nearby apartment building? It’s a daily reminder for me to practice these philosophies that allow me to be a little more happy every day.
and now, my favorite… stupid sh*t that makes me laugh
‘Nuff said.
Great penmanship IMHO.
But like…. LOL.
Okay, time to work. Have an awesome day, folks.
Hugs, R