72. You Want To Live And You Want To Love ❤️
A little note: This newsletter comes to you fresh from The EU (I am here smelling of cheese and croissants; looking like cheese and croissants; JE SUIS UN CROISSANT) where I’m continuing to rigorously interview the lucky countries on my ‘Next Home’ shortlist.
This newsletter will start to feel a little more euro-themed going forward as I consciously uncouple myself from 2.5 decades here on The Island (🇬🇧).
Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii friends.
It’s Sunday, again.
I hope this email finds you well but, you know what, it is okay if it doesn’t because we all have bad days.
Here’s five things you may find interesting and/or meaningful.
1. Migrants 4EVA 🌍
“We are all connected.
Viewed this way, perhaps we can start letting go of the contempt and self-righteous indignation which gave become the signature political emotions of our age, and recognise that we have a common, mutually beneficial goal. I hope that this book will go some way to encouraging us to feel the pain of the immigrant victim of xenophobia without forgetting that racism itself is a form of unease and disease.
Have you ever met a serene, happy white supremacist?
Adopting the right mindset allows us to remember that a racist is suffering, too. It allows us to show both compassion towards both victims of racism: the immigrant and the racist.”
2. Watching 👀
If this doesn’t fill you with joy, I don’t know what will.
3. Art Appreciation 🎨
Elena Gual is a Spanish artist based in London.
4. A Poem
The Truelove — David Whyte
[scroll down to hear his voice as he reads his beautiful poem]
//
“There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.
I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides,
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,
and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them
and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly
so Biblically
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love
so that when
we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and everything confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don’t
because finally
after all this struggle
and all these years
you simply don’t want to
any more
you’ve simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness
however fluid and however
dangerous to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.”
MY GOD HIS VOICE as he reads the poem here ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
5. A Quote
“Be in love with your life, every detail of it.”
―Jack Kerouac
See you next Sunday.