Tuning into the Chorus: How Writing Allows Us to Live More Mindfully
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At the beginning of the year, I wrote down a poem on the first clean page in my journal. Think of it as my take on choosing a ‘word for the year’ – something I wanted to guide me through the next 12 months.
I delicately penned David Whyte’s ‘Everything is Waiting for You’ across 24 lines as if incanting a spell. The past year had been chaotic, full of uncertainty and loss of belief in my abilities and talents. But in David’s words, I found verification of hope.
‘To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings.
Surely,
even you at times,
have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence and the chorus crowding
out your solo voice’.
While I knew I would return to this poem, I never could have imagined how fiercely I would live by David’s words when the world went into lockdown. Like everyone else, I was shut in my home yet not shut out from the world, thanks to the unrelenting 24-hour news cycle.
I’m sure many felt (and continue to feel) a peculiar kind of loneliness, of being part of a global experience yet so utterly out of touch with themselves and their surroundings. On multiple occasions, I’ve taken David’s instruction to put down the ‘weight of my aloneness’ and ‘ease into the conversation’ as a way to feel centered:
“The kettle is singing even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots have left their arrogant aloofness and seen the good in you at last. All the birds and creatures of the world are unutterably themselves.”
___
David’s poem is a meditation on the many understated things that invite us to live and belong just as we are, reminding us of the brilliance of being alive and the endless opportunities inherent in our existence.
It’s also a lesson in mindfulness, and as I so joyfully discovered, this is a practice greatly assisted by writing.
By tuning in to the conversation around you, you may find yourself becoming more attuned to the conversation happening inside yourself. Naturally, a way of acknowledging and paying much due respect to this conversation is by writing everything down.
What is hope if not the knowledge that our notebooks are always there, patiently waiting for us to come home to ourselves, no matter the time of day?
In a world full of distractions, the act of writing allows us to tune in to our thoughts, our feelings and our sense of being.
All it takes is a moment of pause.
“Everything is waiting for you.”
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About
Carina Mancinone
Carina is a digital marketer by day and a freelance writer by night, based in Western Australia. Her penchant for stories and writing have been constant in her life and she believes they allow us the means to imagine endless possibilities as we find our way in the world. Carina is equally obsessed with cooking and one day aspires to line her walls, Nigella Lawson style, with cookbooks from around the world.
