Posts In: simple life

guest poem by Tiffany Brown

I realized sometime recently that I had lost this.
This ability to sit. Stand. Be. Still.
I am moving, texting, calling, playing.
Always.
I often put down the tech for the joy of real life activity but never for stillness.
Never to be bored.
Never to be unstimulated.
My free moments have been raided. Captured by the little blue f, the Clash of Clans, the internet.
My children will remember me in their childhood and it will often be the view of the top of my head as I look down at a lit screen.
I do not simply sit in the sun. Or on the porch. Or in the car.
I do not give myself time to ponder. To think.
I wonder now what we are losing when we lose this.
Because I am not alone. I am not unique.
We are all losing the art of stillness.
Of simply being.
And with this loss comes a new sense of stillness.
A new sense of connection.
And it is with our smart phone, our kindle, our tablet.
This is now our alone time.
Connected to millions.
I am not sure yet if it is better, or worse.
But I am very aware of it being different.

by Monique Minahan

We all wear our stories in some way or another, don’t we? They make us who we are (and sometimes keep us from becoming who we can be if we let them define us too narrowly.)

I started making what I call “Life Malas” because each marker is placed for a life event. I used yellow jade for manipura chakra (solar plexus), green jade for anahata chakra (heart), green ruby zoisite for sahasrara chakra (crown), and a spiral shell I found on the beach because it feels like home.

I made this one for me, so I placed the green jade marker beads at the times when my life and heart were busted open. Marker 1 is at 25, the age I was when Nathan died. Marker 2 is at 37, when my baby was born. Marker 3 is at 98, the age of my great-grandmother, born in 1917, who is breathing her last breaths this year.

Stringing the beads under the darkness of a new moon, it occurred to me that at one of these beads I will pass away myself (and that this life is not a dress rehearsal, so I’ve got to live it right the first time.)

There are 108 beads in a mala, and if I get to see bead 98 like my grandma, I’ll count myself very lucky. I’ll still count myself lucky to see 39 this month.

I made this mala necklace to remind me that both loss and life are part of the same cycle. They coexist beautifully if I let them, and if I practice embracing both rather than inviting one and rejecting the other, I get to experience the full depth of being human instead of just skimming the surface.

My life mala is an outward representation of the integrity, cohesiveness and beauty that emerges when I allow every experience to support the next one. Broken or fragmented as they appear at times, when I view them all together they form this fragile but beautiful thing called life.

Monique Minahan
Contributing Writer

Mo is a writer and yoga teacher who believes in peace over happiness and love over fear. She likes to set her sights high and then take small steps to get there. You’ll find her walking the dirt path behind her house with her little fluffy dog, practicing walking her talk by keeping her head high and her heart open. 

Read more from Monique on her blog, mindfulmo.com