Living is the original art. As a young man I wanted to be a poet and I learned along the way that I already was a poet.

One of the most challenging ways is to slow down enough to relax our heart and feel what is nearest. It could be the sun reflecting off of broken glass in an alley. It could be the shine on a crow. It could be snow on a lamp post.

Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so—just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.

Accepting what we're given is a practice in being present to everything beyond us that lets us become intimate with the nature of life.

The greatest thing we can do to be closer to our own lives and to the freshness of living is to open up again.

I would want to affirm how rare and magnificent and messy it is to be alive, how there is really nothing between us and life, though so many things get in the way, and how our heart is the strongest muscle and resource we have.

The journey is made easier when we can accept that the process of living is designed for what matters to come through us tenderly.