‘God grant me the wisdom to know the people I can’t change, the wisdom to know the people I can…
And the wisdom to know the only person I can change is me…!
Anadi and I had stopped to talk to our friend who sells ‘The big issue’ magazine near Pret, on our way to get our Sunday pain aux raisins…
He spoke of the shame and guilt he carries, ‘important to free yourself from that’, I said, ‘thats a heavy burden’… ‘It is’, he affirmed and then he told us how he prays every day to be released , and that this is also one of his prayers…
That’s the only prayer really; to know its all us… That the only person we can change is ourselves. It comes back again and again to ‘pressing that pause button’ whenever we are pointing a finger in criticism or anger at another person, at the world, at a situation… And to notice there are always three fingers pointing back at us….
These three fingers point at the need to investigate and they point to the place we can change…..
Ourselves.
We can release the guilt and the shame; we can free ourselves from past regrets and doubt and fear, unease… We can change our patterns and re write our scripts.
We are free to do all this, moment by moment, always coming back to the breath, to the now…
In the now – the Buddha taught us – there are three thousand possibilities – in every moment we have the choice to continue on the same groove; or to go in a completely different direction… To consciously create rather than operating unconsciously.
We are free to do all this… We can flourish and heal and grow and flower
Like my two pet geraniums!
They are called Gerard and Georgina and they live on the windowsill outside the front of my flat…They have lived with me for a few months now.
Kate my landlady sent them to me because they were ill, and the previous geraniums who lived there were flourishing… So the flourishing ones went up the steps to Kate’s house, and the sick geraniums moved in…
‘We think you are a plant whisperer’ she said…’ Which is why I am sending them to you…’
And so I whispered to them every day. I told them they were beautiful and that I loved them and I said ‘hello’ and whispered sweet nothings, every single time I passed them…
And I watered them too!
They started to get better and then to flourish and flower. They grew tall and strong and happy… They were whispered back to health
As so we too can whisper ourselves into the best health. By staying in the ‘now.’
By always noticing ourselves and staying present and affirmative; by releasing past regrets and with kind and loving words remembering that in every moment….
There are three thousand possibilities…