Lessons From Biking 245 Miles Across France
October 13, 2023·7 comments·In Brief
Anxiety and stress often masquerade as productivity problems waiting for optimization. But what if the gap between feeling disconnected and feeling alive has nothing to do with solving yourself and everything to do with witnessing others? A week observing older couples navigate marriage, parenthood, and time reveals something modern culture keeps trying to sell you as impossible.
- The shining moment happens in passing. When someone mentions their child's name or wonders what they'd think about something, a light crosses their face. It's not performed for the camera. It's what love actually looks like when no one's watching.
- We've been taught that knowing something means seeing it, observing it from outside. But knowing is inseparable from time spent, words said, words heard. The distance between viewing and understanding is measured in presence, not information.
- Comparison spirals work in both directions. You can spend your life measuring yourself against others endlessly. Or you can recognize that you're a dynamic being, changing daily, rather than a static unit locked in permanent position.
- Most good advice contains someone else's lost dreams disguised as instruction. We treat our advice as if we've already lived it, mastered it, solved it. But we're always in the initial state, never the final one. That changes what guidance actually means.
- If connection and dialogue are where meaning happens, what does it mean that we've optimized ourselves into isolation? The answer isn't found in another self-improvement system. It's somewhere in the space between you and another person.
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Comments
to be soulful in experience
communication from the soul to “give your body and mind a chance to spend time together”
A couple of the items in this one genuinely brought a tear thinking about my daughters. Thank you.
“You have to speak from the diaphragm. That’s the only way that your words carry, is when you give them strength. Belief begins in the body.”
Kyla,
I recently started taking voice lessons. I’m in my late 70’s. I realize I never learned how to breathe. I am discovering my voice.
Jim
My favorite line in the entire note!
I forwarded this note to my daughter’s (29 and 30) and they were both immensely moved by it. Thanks Kyla!
“Give your mind and body a chance to spend time together”. This really hit home for me! Thank you for sharing this beautiful post with all of us!
I really enjoyed this. I have read and reread it a few times. Thanks for posting.
Beautiful things happen when we do hard things. Humans were built for those hard things. We need more of them.
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter is worth a read.
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