The texture of your inner life
is the only thing that matters
The whole universe exists in the texture of your inner life.
It is the thing everything points to and the thing nothing can replace.
Pain, beauty, agony, grief, glory, doubt, reluctance, optimism, bliss, flow, joy, fear, envy, awe, pleasure, delight.
Whether you are up or down, high or low, it’s all we really have, yet somehow it’s often the last thing we consider, the last thing we value.
But that’s the thing, it doesn’t even mind that. Much like the sun, it carries on whether we see it as sacred or not. Powering everything. Persisting through every heartbreak and success, every morning walk and evening dishwasher load. Shaping every belief, every action, every choice. Its signature is woven into everything that comes after.
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Now put your texture next to mine. Next to the neighbor’s. Next to his mother-in-law, and boss, and daughter’s bully. Competing, coexisting, compounding - pushing and pulling until weaving together to create something new.
New friendships and projects, new milestones and memories. This invisible tapestry makes up our world.
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Imagine how you might move through the world if the tapestry were visible – if at any moment you could read the texture of someone else’s inner life. And they yours, and whatever the texture was…was just allowed, witnessed, celebrated.
Maybe you would linger with the neighbor so he could finish his story.
Maybe those noticing yours would enthusiastically cheer you on, allowing you to lighten up, to take the load off, to finally relax.
Maybe you would make it home for dinner so your daughter could tell you about her day.
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Regardless of what we are ever doing - whether it is performing brain surgery or writing the next novel, tying our shoe laces or slicing an apple – all we are ever really doing is shaping the texture of our inner lives.
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The whole universe lives within the texture of your inner life.
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This email was meant to be a launch email for “What are you made of?”, our new class on understanding the invisible systems that shape who you are. But in writing it, I found myself feeling tender, very different in sensation from how silly and joyful our launch on social media was this week. Instead of forcing the silly, I’m embracing what’s here. And what’s here today feels both precious and matter-of-fact.
And that’s really what the class is about, to hold whatever you are feeling - silly or precious or tender with levity and acceptance, because it’s always changing - and it’s always at work, shaping the tapestry of your life.
Lori