Things I Am Liking

Fareed Zakarian, the scent of spring, a buttery & salty cookie are few of the things I have been liking, and that have helped me find some grounding between the highs and lows of the recent days.

This week was made up of extremes, which are never good for me, with an addictive brain prone to depression, wired to be in an endless search of a high, while often confusing rest with stagnation.

The Mavis Staples birthday celebration show, the reception for Ringo’s new EP with Linda Perry, lights, photos, “being treated like a princess” as Catherine defined the backstage experience, were followed by an emotional rough landing.

I am opening this week’s column with this because, when life takes me to a temporary high, I struggle to come down and settle in the in-between, in the time of rest (not stagnation); I tend to go straight to the lowest low, where all I can see is exclusion, injustice, separation, adversity, judgment.

When I go from highest high to lowest low, I have to work much harder at finding the things I am liking that are in the middle, that maybe don’t stand out glittery with an All-Access Pass, but that, in their unfiltered colors, are the ones that linger, and that I can go back to over and over again.

So I have purposely curated things that don’t have anything to do with the events I attended this past weekend (which were amazing and I am very grateful for), rather with moments of quiet daily life; these moments, when I pause long enough to remember, are those in which the deep roots of my contentment and gratitude are.

Today feels heavy: maybe it’s the fog, maybe it’s the fear, maybe it’s just who I am. What I know, however, is that gratitude has always been the key to feeling okay in however I happen to be feeling, neither grasping nor rejecting.

I have been liking:

• These two interviews on NPR.

  Fareed Zakaria has a new book out, “Age of Revolutions” that I highly recommend to gain understanding of how we got here, as Americans, as humans, compassion and curiosity for those who have believes we find hard to accept and understand, as well as hope for the future, which can only be possible by truly knowing and understanding history.

  Doris Kearns, also, has written a fascinating book “An Unfinished Love Story”. If you are passionate about the 1960s like I am, this will be a good read. I loved hearing her speak on NPR.