That's a tomorrow solution

Rather than saying “that’s a problem for tomorrow,” or “that’s a tomorrow problem,” I’ve started instead to say, “that’s a solution for tomorrow,” or, “that’s a tomorrow solution,” and it’s such as silly and simple change-up, that it always makes me smile.

And like my manicurist in San Juan said after noticing how anxiousness had affected my nails, lo que no se resuelve hoy, se resuelve mañana. Or, what isn’t solved today, is solved tomorrow.”

I’ve also heard this mental trick of, when being faced with a problem solution opportunity, saying “I’m so grateful this has already been resolved,” (and saying it with your chest, or saying it with heart! So it’s felt.) Then you get to wait for it to unfold, now in a more easeful place of knowing—feeling—that it will happen. It’s something of a fun little future trust fall.

Also, a reminder to self that the simplest solution is is usually the best solution.

"There is no best in music"

Harry Styles was just awarded Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards, and I was disappointed. I wanted Bad Bunny, “Benito,” to win; I wanted it to be the “we’ve made it” moment of Latin music that I feel like it deserves to be, that the impact Bad Bunny’s “Un Verano Sin Ti” album has had on me and so many others around the world, an impact shown in numbers, in streams, and felt deep and in the heart, in the way I know so many people feel about musicians and music they love. It’s just that it was this album; it was this moment.

In Styles’ acceptance speech (and I do adore and appreciate him as an artist, I will say!) he said, “We all know there is no best in music.” And that is so beautiful, so important to note, and so true. All art that is meaningful, beautiful, created out of love, in passion, out of necessity, for contribution, as a gift. I texted it to a friend, and she responded, “No favorites.” Because I’ve had this thing for some time now of saying I don’t believe in a “favorite,” a “best”; when everything fulfills, fills and inspires me in such different and special ways. I’ll often get asked what my “favorite” travel destination is/was when people find out I was a travel journalist. How to answer that? There are places I’ve met in different states and ways; places that have met me, suprised me, challenged me, changed me. So much of it was about who I was at that moment, too.

There is no best (a supremacist concept), and I choose not to play favorites. We do our best, which is always changing, to be our best, which is always changing, in every moment. I choose not to play favorites, and instead appreciate each moment for what it gives, for what it is.

Dedicated to Bad Bunny and “Un Verano Sin Ti,” my Album of the Year

The most relevant response

I had the idea that tonight I was going to write here something related to a postcard a friend sent me from Japan, something I’ve had written in my head for a while. That, and maybe watch the new Love Island UK season premiere. Then, I got back from yoga, had dinner and have had a heavy headache since. I don’t get headaches often at all anymore, which is nice. (I think since I started meditating—and overall developed more practices and space to listen and respond to my body and its signals in a more supportive way.) It also feels like a lot, I think because I’m no longer used to it. I’m reminding myself I just got back from traveling, was at altitude and in freezing temperatures skiing in Colorado, and looking at a screen most of the day, so my body and brain are probably responding to all that.

In the Vedic meditation community we talk a lot about “relevant responses,” which I think requires 1) present moment awareness and 2) the ability, and choice, to align, which may mean surrendering an expectation or prior idea. And in any event, meaning this event, it didn’t feel right to force write what feels like a special story post, because that’s something I want to enjoy. It did feel right to take an ibuprofen, which I also don’t do often, and also to write this post on relevance. And somehow writing it has not worsened my headache, and actually felt good.

Miracles happen all the time

When I was sick in January, I started watching episodes of the well-being and sustainable living docuseries “Down to Earth with Zac Efron,” (super recommend it). The second episode centers on water. In it, they travel to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France, which is believed to have healing waters. They meet the resident doctor, who is on staff to verify pilgrims’ claims of miracle healings. It’s really incredible to see the exchange and explanations, to see the medical doctor show X-ray, scans, documented evidence of healings that occurred after people visited the site, inexplicable by scientific medical knowledge. Since 1862, the Church has recognized 70 cases as “miraculous.”

Last week I reached out to a close friend when I was needing to process in relation to someone who knows me well, and she also happens to know a particular area of medicine well in which I was seeking solace. (A miracle.) She said many beautiful, helpful, truthful things to me in that conversation. She said, “Miracles happen all the time.” She’s right. They do. They really do.

A couple days later I was walking along the Venice Beach boardwalk with another friend, and we shared a moment of appreciation for the ocean, just over there, shimmering in the late afternoon sun. “The ocean is such a miracle,” she said, apropos of nothing but being in that moment. And in that, I was in awe.

Miracles happen all the time.

For Micha, a miracle of a friend with whom 16 years has been full of miracles, from a sorority to a move to Buenos Aires, a Sullivan Street psychic and everything in between, including (soon!) Ibiza

We're here, we may as well enjoy it

This thought started visiting me often, when I would find myself waiting in a line, on hold for something, existing in some between-space of time and/or place that really didn’t seem all that exciting, that wasn’t really my preference, but was what it needed to be then.

“I’m here; I may as well enjoy it.” I found myself saying. And, magically, I would almost automatically find a way to enjoy it. Something would become comical, I would come more into the present, or I would feel more like the whole situation was more mine, because I was choosing to make it into enjoyment. And I think that’s what it’s about, remembering that we deserve enjoyment, to live life in joy, regardless of the circumstances

Attention and appreciation make anything special. And when we can turn the mundane into the magical, I guess that’s called alchemy.

I trust my future self

I started saying this to myself, at some point back when I was in Brooklyn, as a way to come back to the now. To keep from falling into a spiral about a hypothetical future, from experiencing what I’ve sometimes heard referred to in the Vedic community as “future suffering”—suffering in the now (which was really a nice now, back then, and now, too!), mucking it up over a maybe.

“I trust my future self.” Even when I thought I wasn’t ready, for that big opportunity, that other thing I didn’t see coming, I really had been. I had received it, and I had come to believe in the innate rightness of it, even if it didn’t happen right away. I had a decades-long track record of things really working out. Future me deserved the trust of past me, and the now me. So, I let it go. Let her go.

As I started saying this to myself more, I was giving myself even more reason to believe. I’d go to add something to my Calendar and see it was already there. I’d open my phone to write something down, and it was done. I’d think of an email I meant to respond to, and I’d already sent it. Future me really didn’t need to prove anything else, but I guess she wanted to. Notes to self; jokes on me, and jokes for me. So, now I do more (less) to just let her be.

For Kelly, with whom I found deep trust in myself (we both did!) in those early and formative professional years, and with whom I formed a deep and formative friendship.