Phosphorescence

by Julia Baird

Maybe it’s just that we’re all made of stardust.

all other sounds drown out, and you hear only the beating of your heart, the drawing of your own breath, the uncertainty of your footfalls. You may be surrounded by the hugest crowd of family and friends, and by the shiniest love, but you walk alone through these medical valleys of darkness.

I have yearned for an end to excruciating pain that no drugs can touch,

like a dark ogre stealing our joy, our purpose and our hope as we sleep; or sometimes just like a thick black airless cave with no apparent exit.

This is not about burning brightly, but yielding simple phosphorescence — being luminous at temperatures below incandescence, quietly glowing without combusting. Staying alive, remaining upright,

In those particularly dark days, when my world imploded with loss and illness, and when I had to find and tap my own reserves, my search for what makes us phosphorescent took on a new urgency

seek awe, and nature, daily.

show kindness; practise grace; eschew vanity; be bold; embrace friends, family, faith and doubt, imperfection and mess; and live deliberately.

you cannot, waste a breath.

The sun’s rise and the sun’s retreat bookend our days with awe.

Awe makes us stop and stare. Being awestruck dwarfs us, humbles us, makes us aware we are part of a universe

the mysterious; it is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.’

shinrin yoku, whereby participants are walked slowly through tracts of trees to touch them, listen to their sounds, and reconnect with nature.

Real silence is not about muffling all sounds, though, but about muffling all artificial, or human-made, sounds.

sometimes the best way to pay attention to country is to keep your mouth shut, open your eyes and just listen.

the sea is inside us.

when dwarfed by an experience, we are more likely to look to one another and care for one another and feel more connected.

We spend a lot of time in life trying to make ourselves feel bigger — to project ourselves, occupy space, command attention, demand respect — so much so that we seem to have forgotten how comforting it can be to feel small and experience the awe that comes from being silenced by something greater than ourselves, something unfathomable, unconquerable and mysterious.

there can be few delights as sweet as sitting in the sun’s light, soaking up the apricity, thawing down to the bone.

At a time when we are addicted to screens, filter our own faces in selfies, exercise on machines and talk to robots, wondering why there is so much anxiety and depression, can there be any more potent call than to slow, forget ourselves, sit under trees and stars and listen to country

no one can make you feel inferior unless you consent to them doing so.

the attraction of her person, joining with the charm of her conversation, and the character that attended all she said or did, was something bewitching’. Who cared, then, about her nose?

grace — showing generosity and forgiveness even to those who do not deserve it — is not weak but extraordinarily powerful.

kindness should not just be an aspiration but a daily practice, a muscle that, if exercised, can grow strong and become a habit or a way of life.