“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Energy is my currency of choice.
When I was 17, I read a quote by Sarah Bernhardt: "Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich." It has taken me the full ten years since then to begin to grasp the challenge of this circular reference. I credit my mom for helping me get it. I used to tease her for tackling the dishes with as much focus and intention as she applies to redesigning a chip at work. Now I've grown to believe that the energy she pours without reserve or attachment into one task boomerangs back to her. It feeds her ability to do the other and makes the process as enriching as the outcome.
Since I am my mother's daughter, I want, I want, I want …. to share generously; receive graciously; love unconditionally; peer inward often and fearlessly; believe strongly, but hold my beliefs with an open hand; grow incessantly, but find contentment in stillness; cultivate my emotional life as intentionally as my cerebral life; and leave my fingerprints on everything I touch.
Hmmm, you ask: Share what? Receive what? Believe what? Well, I think tomorrow's direct object is irrelevant today. What is more relevant, essential even, is the adverb -- the quality. So I commit to the how and trust that the what will reveal itself, evolving along with me. I hope it will, at least. I am counting on being rich.
— Deena Bahri