Dear reader,
There have been quite a few rain showers for it being June. Have the heavens been opening up where you are?
I’m a thinker. I’m thoughtful and thought-full. If you’re here, I can only imagine that you are too.
Frankly, I’m completely exhausted being this way all the time. My new word for the rest of the year and beyond (because, yes, you can pivot whenever you want, nobody cares) is DO. Nothing is more fulfilling than doing, making, creating. Thinking alone can only get you so far. You can just do things. Don’t let anyone make you feel like you can’t.
I’m a planner. I plan short-term and long-term. I own a Papier custom planner. The humbling reality is that the majority of my life’s plans so far have not gone according to plan.
I’m not suggesting you shouldn’t think or plan. In fact, please do keep doing those things. I’m just fully realizing that we don’t have to always be the way we’ve always been, if it’s not serving us or anyone else anymore.
This past weekend, I got to celebrate my cousin and his wife at their baby shower. It’s a girl! And it got me reflecting (I’m a thinker, okay!) on the world I want this baby girl to grow up in.
Shocker! It’s not the one we’re living in right now. And, no, I don’t mean that we should go to Mars. I want her to grow up in a world where she sees every woman around her going for it, trying, failing, pivoting, winning, leading, being celebrated, being herself.
A straight-talkin’, clear-minded friend said to me this week: DON’T DELAY WHAT YOU REALLY WANT TO DO. It really struck me because I’ve never given what I really want to do full permission to run the show. I’ve been putting it on the shelf, and what I thought I put away actually just stares me in the face every day. And truth be told, that’s no way to live.
The shelf isn’t a certain place to leave something. It can collapse any second. What we’ve got is what is in our hands right now — don’t hang it up. Don’t leave it on the shelf. There is no “later.” There is no longer certainty where we used to seek certainty. We each still have a part to play, a relay leg to run, in this changing world to grow ourselves, and, as a byproduct, change the world.
Channel the sprinter’s mind. Don’t delay what you really want to do. I think that’ll make the world a better place via billions of ripple effects we can’t even quantify — there’s no way that we won’t feel the collective positive difference.
Pour into whatever it is that is in front of you. Treasure the beings in front of you. The next steps will unfold. And I’m typing these words because I need these words too.
And by the time our baby girls are of age, perhaps we can all be proud of the world we’ve built for them, the stage we’ve set for them to live in love, the intentional lives and the beautiful world (the batons) we get to pass on.
On that note, I was also reunited with THE queen Janet this past week. A dear friend. A treasured mentor. A writer. A reader. A contemplative. A doer. A thespian. A teacher. A fierce advocate for women everywhere. An inspiration who I was blessed to have had write the foreword to my book six years ago. Hopefully the sight of her can bring you joy. She told me that if we don’t use our voices, no one will know just how intelligent we are. I left our reunion reminding myself of the mantra to use in good and bad times: WWJD, or What Would Janet Do?
And though I know she is one-of-one, I hope you have someone like Janet in your life. And I hope you get to spend time with babies and expectant mothers. What a way to zoom out. What a way to realign with what really matters to you.
And I hope that what matters is aligned with what you really want to do. And godspeed, my friend. May you have the resilient gusto to find a way to do it now, the only time there is.
What sparked joy this week: Pride month lighting up Dallas’ skyline + the Reunion Tower in a week full of reunions and Timbra the piano designed by Edelweiss and Kelly Wearstler! What sparked joy for you?!
With much love & to going beyond the surface,
Anjali