Dear friends, I am sitting down in front of my laptop at 9:30 pm on Tuesday evening, writing you to say hello and let you know that I am thinking of each and every one of you. Today was a day full of seeing patients, and I walk away from the office, inspired by the courage within each of us to keep going. Life can be hard, and life can be beautiful, and I am reminded daily by my patients how both are simultaneously true facts.
Our challenge is to hold whatever arises, for the moment. To examine our experience under the gentle light of compassion. Yet this is not easy, this type of awareness. We want more of what feels good. We want less of what feels difficult. But often that is not up to us to decide.
And so we continue with what is, allowing our life circumstances to shape us, just like rain and wind erode rock into form over time. Leaning in fully, wholeheartedly, to all that we are offered requires the deepest, most tender type of vulnerability from us. We continue to ask ourselves whether we can open up in this way, again and again. We reach out to each other. And we reach inward to be with the eternal questions that our hearts sing, echoing within the chambers of our bodies and then out into the universe until we hear the notes fade.
Friends, wherever you find yourself as you read this, whatever corner of the earth, whatever state of mind, know that we are connected. We are connected by our universal experience, by the spectrum of our emotions, by the joy and the grief, and all that lies in between. You are not alone. With gratitude, Monisha