“I will not live an unlived life … I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me … to loosen my heart’*

‘Splitting is one way we have of getting rid of self-knowledge … ‘I’m not bad, you are.”**

I choose again not to be a stranger to my days, that is, to myself and to possibility.

I’ve sometimes been accused of things I’ve thought to be more about my accuser than me – projecting onto me something they can’t face in themselves.  This is negative splitting but I wonder whether there’s positive splitting, too, meaning we can be strangers to really good things in our lives.

These lie hidden within our lives, waiting to be discovered, turning this part of me and you from a stranger into a friend.

‘Mindfulness is widely understood and described as the state of being more conscious about yourself, your surroundings and those you interact with.’^

The way of life in all its fullness is a movement from being a stranger to being a friend.

(*Dawna Markova, quoted in the Northumbria Community‘s Morning Prayer.)
(**From Stephen Grosz’s The Examined Life.)
(^From Rohit Bhargava’s Non-Obvious.)