Issue #1
Notable Nuggets From Others
Inspiring stuff I found whilst scootin’ through the internet
Something Tom Hanks Helped Me Understand
You ever notice how much life there is all around us all the time? There’s astonishing beauty and downright magical things, like, I mean… kittens and puppies! They’re real things! They actually exist and aren’t just CG from some Star Wars movie. I mean, LOOK AT THEM! It’s like we’re walking among Ewoks!
But delight is only one side of the coin. Life can also feel so very heavy, cruddy, and overwhelming sometimes. Like… Costco-family-size-bulk-package-of-all-the-tough-life-things auto-shipped right to your door when all your cupboards and garages are already completely full and bursting at the seams with the stuff.
The art I create and share generally slants toward the “cute and delightful” end of the spectrum, but that’s generally not a reflection of what I’m working through on the inside. I spend a lot of time trying not to be completely crushed under the weight of my personal catalog of imprinted ouches—sometimes trying to make sense of why it happened (which is never a constructive use of time), and more often, what I might make of it that I can be proud of (a much more worthwhile endeavor). The cuteness I create isn’t a sign that I’m being fake and just slapping a smiley face sticker on the door of an outhouse, it’s that I do my best to not let what’s happened to me determine who and how I’m allowed to be in the world.
Again, a worthwhile endeavor, but it can be exhausting. And this brings me to a statement I’ve been given countless times over the years and never really understood or found helpful: “This too shall pass.”
Anytime someone said that to me, a little invisible middle finger would raise up inside because it just felt like an unhelpful invalidation of what I was experiencing. I could conceptually recognize that it was a true statement that was coming from someone who meant well, but it landed as so unhelpful and even dismissive. I felt unseen and misunderstood. But something about the way Tom Hanks speaks about it in this short video helped it land very differently for me.
Do you know what’s incredible? You and me. We’re incredible. Despite pain and disappointments and the endless unpredictability we’re surrounded by, we keep showing up. We keep working to move things forward. Even when we feel stuck and like nothing is happening the way we want it to, we keep trying. We keep learning. We keep answering the existential role call with “present,” and that’s remarkable. And when we’re mindful of the fact that what’s in front of us is only what’s in front of us right now, it’s like the physics of gravity has changed and everything feels lighter.
When I think back to some of my best times—the times I hoped would become a permanent expanse of “all good, all the time“—and apply this idea retrospectively, I can’t deny the truth of it. That, too, passed. And if it’s true of some of the best I’ve experienced, why wouldn’t it also be true of the existential dog turd I just stepped in?
The Reality (yes, capital “R”) is that life is an endless expanse of moments. Some we love, and some we don’t, but a truth we can always lean on—for comfort and perhaps an ounce of optimism when it looks dark and cruddy out—is that everything will transform and we’ll get to have a new experience. And then another new experience. And then another. And another… on into forever.
That’s a beautiful thing. And I’m grateful that Mr. Hanks shared his perspective on this. I feel clarity and a sense of comfort right now, and this too shall pass. And then it’ll appear again in another form.