Must read: “Protecting your inner life in times of political turmoil”

Tags

inner life, Marie Howe, poetry, resistance, self-care

Photo by Flickr user James Petts (Creative Commons license).

I have said before that there are many different kinds of resistance. I listed some of them. I practice as many as I can.

But the one action that you might not think of as resistance is what poet Marie Howe calls “protecting your inner life.”

Shawna Ayoub Ainslie sent me this link earlier in the week, and it’s the best thing I’ve read in a while. It goes deeper than simply “practice self-care,” of which I am of course a huge advocate. Howe wrote her piece for Literary Hub, and she says:

We live in an economic system where everything, almost everything is commodified—everything can be sold for a price. And almost anything can be threatened. But there is a place within us no one can ever know. Within that place we hold all the books we’ve ever read, the music we’ve listened to, the paintings we’ve gazed at, the plays we’ve watched, the poems we’ve read. All the important conversations. We have within each of us a great library, a concert hall, a cathedral, a temple, a mediation space, and a field…before and after political action, I want to remember to protect and preserve that space where moral action (and poetry) begins.

I needed to read that this week. I wish you a weekend full of time spent nourishing your inner life, that part no one can take from us.