“In times like these, we need world-class coping skills just to stay fully awake, enjoy our lives and be of service to others.”
I’ve been sharing Mary Pipher’s recent article in the New York Times, How I Build a Good Day When I’m Full of Despair at the World with everyone. When I first read this it was as if I hadn’t known how thirsty I was until I got a sip of water. Of course she would bring wisdom to how we stay in it week after month after year.
Like many, my first exposure to Mary Pipher‘s work was Reviving Ophelia. I was in graduate school, a feminist and ready to change the world. Reviving Ophelia taught me about myself and my own adolescence so that I could better understand the young women I came to work with. Letters to a Young Therapist deepened this. Seeking Peace helped me crawl out of my own burnout. I carried it around like a passport to sanity. With each of her books I found a beacon lighting my way along my own developmental journey as a therapist, a woman, a mother, a person striving towards Buddhism and an aspiring agent of change. Now I am savoring A Life in Light like a secret stash of ice cream, slowly and one bite at a time to make it last as long as possible.
In How I Build a Good Day she brings us the simplest and most sage wisdom. To have a good day, resource three things important to you. She writes about her grandmother’s resilience, psychology and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. While those three things actually mirror my own, we all have three simple things we could point to as pinpricks of light in these darker times. Maybe it’s the rising sun, an adult who saw you as a child or prayer. It should be simple, strong and honest. Mostly, she reminds us that we do not have to save the world, but that we can take intentional steps to making the world a better place.
“Most of us cannot be great heroes. However, we all have the capacity to be ordinary heroes. We may not be able to stop the global use of plastics, but we can work with local environmental groups. We cannot eliminate prejudice or nuclear weapons. However, we can deliver Meals on Wheels or repair bikes for giveaway programs.”
What or who are your three sources to make it a good day? And what can you do in your own way to make the world a better place?