Don't

“You give a lot of great advice about what to do. Do you have any advice of what not to do?


Don’t do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don’t stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don’t fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don’t focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fall out. Don’t surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn’t true anymore. Don’t seek joy at all costs. I know it’s hard to know what to do when you have a conflicting set of emotions and desires, but it’s not as hard as we pretend it is. Saying it’s hard is ultimately a justification to do whatever seems like the easiest thing to do—have the affair, stay at that horrible job, end a friendship over a slight, keep loving someone who treats you terribly. I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always. As the years pass, I’m learning how to better trust my gut and not do the wrong thing, but every so often I get a harsh reminder that I’ve still got work to do.”

― Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Sister Ship

"...You'll never know the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore."

 -- Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things

Space

One of the basic principles of every single art form has to do not with what's there- the music, the words, the movement, the dialogue, the paint - but with what isn't.  In the visual arts it's called the 'negative space' - the blank parts around and between objects, which is, ofcourse, every bit as crucial as the objects themselves. The negative space allows us to see the non-negative space in all its glory and gloom, its colour and mystery and light. What isn't there gives what's there meaning. IMAGINE THAT. 

-- Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things

"...I didn't want to stay with my ex-husband, not at my core, even though whole swaths of me did. And if there is one thing i believe more than I believe anything else, it's that you can't fake the core. The truth that lives there will eventually win out. It's a god we must obey, a force that brings us to our knees..." 

 -- Cheryl Strayed, Dear Sugar

"Inhabit the beauty that lives in your beastly body and strive to see the beauty in all the other beasts."

-- Cheryl Strayed

Radical Empathy

You can mark your progress breath by breath. 

Literally. And it's there that I recommend you begin. Every time you think I hate that fucking bitch, I want you to neutralize that thought with a breath. Calm your mind. Breathe in deeply with intention, then breathe out. Do not think I hate that fucking bitch while you do it. Give yourself that. Blow that bitch right out of your chest. Then move onto something else. 

I have breathed my way through so many people I felt wronged by; through so many situations I couldn't change. Sometimes while doing this I've breathed in acceptance and breathed out love. Sometimes I've breathed in gratitude and out forgiveness. Sometimes I haven't been able to muster anything beyond the breath itself, my mind forced blank with nothing but the desire to be free of sorrow and rage. 

It works. And the reason it works is the salve is being applied directly to the wound. It's not a coincidence that you describe your pain as being lodged in your chest. when you breathe with calm intention you're zapping the white rage monster precisely where it lives. You're cutting off its feeding tube and forcing a new thought into your head - one that nurtures rather then tortures you. It's essentially mental self-disipline. I'm not suggesting one deny negative emotions, but rather you accept them and move through them by embracing the power we have to keep from wallowing in emotions that don't serve us well.

It's hard work. It's important work. I believe something like forgiveness is on the other side. You will get there, dear woman. Just try.

Your, 

Sugar

Extract from Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed

Tiny Beautiful Things

Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar  Cheryl Strayed
This is a group of letters from Strayed's advice column. She writes with compassion, honesty, wisdom, humor and guts! It is such a great read, i recommend it!