Mingle the starlight with your lives and you won’t be fretted by trifles.*
(Maria Mitchell)

I am constantly struck dumb by this mystery [just atoms and molecules].**
(Alan Lightman)

If you want to explain yourself, you’ll need the right words.

In her describing of a children’s book What Miss Mitchell Saw, which tells the story of the 19th century astronomer‘s early life, Maria Popova observes:

Names become a central trope in the book – the dignifying, truth-affirming act of calling all realities by their true names.^

This includes you and me.

Before we find our true names we must find the words that are important to us:

finding the words is another step in learning to see^^.

We each are made up of many wonderful and extraordinary words.

Then may we find our true name, the one that is an adventure and not a prison.

(*Maria Mitchell, quoted in Maria Popova’s brain Pickings: Favourite Children’s Books of 2019.)
(**From Alan Lightman’s Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine.)
(^From Maria Popova’s brain Pickings: Favourite Children’s Books of 2019.)
(^^Robin Wall Kimmerer, quoted in Maria Popova’s brain Pickings: Favourite Children’s Books of 2019.)