Today is Day 5 of my Mind Your Ps and Qs series – my contribution to the Write 31 Days blogging challenge – wherein I’m writing about pronoia, peace, and quiety. Pronoia is the philosophy that the world is conspiring to shower us all with blessings; quiety is calmness and serenity; and peace of course needs no definition.
I believe we should all live our lives as though they are love letters to the world we inhabit.
I find great inspiration in this admonition from Kurt Vonnegut:
“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.”
The photo above is a page in my journal. And in many ways I think it provides a perfect glimpse of who I am. My art is often simple. But in that one page I reveal lots about myself – I love flowers (after all I’m a flower essence practitioner and aromatherapist among other things); I like beading; I’m fascinated by hands; I adore paper, particularly handmade paper (the base sheet on this piece is filled with seeds and threads, which are important symbols to me); and scent is a huge part of my life (I’ve used sandalwood and ginger essential oils on the paper).
But not everything is on the surface either. Just like this journal page where you have to open the entwined I hands to read what I’ve written, you might have to hang around a bit and look to know that I often write poetry on my feet; that I speak with angels; that I’ve been recording my dreams since I was a teenager; that I believe having a pair of red shoes is mandatory for my overall life happiness.
If you peek beneath the hands in my journal you’ll find this message:
And I think that sums up how I choose to show up in the world.
Part of my intention of this series is to share information and resources that pique your interest and curiosity and hopefully expand your own connection. So with that in mind, here’s a link to a hands-on peace initiative: The Peace Crane Project.
I’m handing it off to you now. Let me pose a question: Suppose we communicate deeply with our hands. Suppose we convey our purposes and possibilities to each other when we touch palms in a handshake, or perhaps place our hands upon each other’s hearts, or handing a friend a flower. What would your hands say? How do you want to show up in the world? Do tell – you know I love to hear.
Interesting, Deborah, I use my hands to communicate all day doing my transcription work! I do appreciate a nice firm handshake and try to really attend each time I shake someone’s hand.
Ooh yes Janet – you’re a perfect example of communicating with hands-on work.
There are all sorts of theories on the origin of the handshake, but certainly the idea that it conveys a gesture of peace – that one is not holding a weapon – is significant. I like to think that our hands touching and traveling up our arms into our hearts is an energetic connection. I love that you pay conscious attention to handshakes!
Hi Deborah – love these posts … PQs … as you so clearly say: “quiety is calmness and serenity; and peace of course needs no definition”
Recently I’ve come across a lot of communication issues … of which the major one – is that people don’t introduce themselves sufficiently clearly … the one that stood out for me was a doctor (34) who was a terminal cancer patient … she noted her doctors didn’t come in and explain who, what etc they were and wrote a blog-post about it “Hallo, my name is …”
Our hospital Nursing Manager brought it up at a talk she was giving about the state of our Hospital Trust here … and I suggested that if she carried on giving her talks, perhaps she could include references to schools too … as I’d come across someone (a kid of 10) who was bullied …
Then there’s a TED talk … https://www.ted.com/talks/kio_stark_why_you_should_talk_to_strangers?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread you might be interested in listening to …
Cheers Hilary
I greatly appreciate the heads up about the TED talk Hilary – I indeed found it interesting.