Tag: Nature

“Beyond the illusion of objectivity, shame also shifts our focus away from the real time and place of our power. Our agency dwells in the present moment. The here and now is the place where we can actively exercise control. It becomes impossible to access our power to shape our lives and outlooks when shame is forever shoving us into memories of a painful past and twisted assumptions about tomorrow. Abstract narratives of failure and hopelessness keep our attention on spaces where we truly have no ability to effect change. Depression and shame force us to practice and rehearse powerlessness until it feels like a defining feature of who we are.”

“Shame often arises from a judgement of our life’s project as a whole, unified work. I was well acquainted with shame and sadness as a child, but I also had a friend in nature, a friend that constantly reminded me that our lives do no require formal interrogation. That we don’t live as mathematical sums of events, successes and failures. Our lives exist in their realest form here, in this exact moment, and when we apply ourselves to fully witnessing the here and now of our strange and beautiful universe, shame becomes an illusion, just a trick of the light.”