"How do I keep going?"
A manifesto of sorts
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A song I’m loving:
I have asked myself this question over and over throughout my life. At times, the question has come close to being a life-or-death inquiry; other times, it is a simple question meant to help me get through a boring task I don’t want to do. I ask myself: How do I keep going when life is brutal? When it’s glorious, or repetitive, or piercing? How do I keep showing up to be in and of the world, even when doing so requires me to bring myself more alive and, in turn, closer to actually feeling it all?
Here is a manifesto of sorts I started writing to myself a while back, when I was quite depressed. Re-reading it now moved me — that I thought to try and write such a thing during a season of life where everything felt impossibly hard. I remember imagining it as a life raft I was tossing to myself when I felt like I was moving farther and farther out of reach, out of the bounds of okayness. Even the act of writing it kept me tethered to the parts of me who knew it to be true.
I randomly came back to it yesterday, during a time I need it not in the same way I did when I started it, but in a new way. While I haven’t been so called to write about harder things lately, I finished it — making it feel less like a one-time-only prescription and more like a tapestry of support I can turn to in various seasons of life. I find it interesting that while the reasons for asking “how do I keep going?” have shifted a bit recently, the “guidance” to myself still feels so deeply relevant and true to me now, too. Perhaps you’ll find yourself somewhere in it – or maybe even take it as inspiration to make your own How To Keep Going personal manifesto, something to write out and keep on your desk when you forget what on earth to do next.
How do I keep going?
Stop trying to get somewhere else. There is nowhere else to get to. There is no escaping this; not for now, at least. It is impossible to be anywhere other than where you are. I know – it sucks sometimes, but it is the truth. I know, the truth is hard sometimes, but it simply is. Spend more of your energy learning to stay where you are than trying to escape.
How do I keep going?
Do as Mister Rogers says and look for the helpers: organizers, the kind cashier at Trader Joe’s who seems to genuinely mean it when they ask “how are you?”, teachers, your therapist, dear friends, the garbage truck driver who, without fail, will honk extra when he notices your daughter watching him with total glee as he collects the week’s trash. Notice the ones who put care into how they move, and ask yourself how you can put more care into how you move. Ask yourself where in your day you might create a single ripple.
How do I keep going?
Drive below the speed limit in especially beautiful places so you can take them in a few seconds longer, so their particulars can linger a little. Yell “BOP!” whenever you see a Bird Of Prey perched somewhere, even if it’s only you in the car. Roll the window down when you drive past the estuary, letting the fog dance across your outstretched hand, the wind lassoing the hairs on your arm. Get the buffalo’s milk soft serve at the market before driving home. Carry what lingers with you and let it remind you of how you want to be, of how you want to see.
How do I keep going?
Click. Click. Click. Take out your film camera and capture moments that pull you into them. Capture what causes you to gasp or question or laugh or breathe. The quietness of an empty road. The strange formation of a mountain. Your daughter’s somehow-blonde curls against the deep green of a redwood tree. Yellow flowers growing around the tires of a forgotten car. A body of water you later peer into like a mirror, like it will show you something you’re looking for. Capture the most natural of beauty, the kind that needs no editing or alteration. Capture what you don’t expect. Capture what catches your attention and sit with why, letting it show you what to keep looking for or, even more important, what you already have.
How do I keep going?
Instead of always trying to rise above it, let your anger remind you of what you want for yourself, for everyone else. Let it point you in the direction of what you require.
How do I keep going?
Watch what shape the butter takes as it dissolves in the pot. Slow down when you make soup so you can tune in the moment it all starts to boil, the moment bubbles replace stillness. Slow down enough to think about the farmer who grew the onion you chopped, the brightness you know the lemon will add later on, the kneading someone did to the dough that became the warm sourdough baguette waiting for you on the table. Notice how un-alone you really are while you make soup. Simmer in the making of it. Savor the sip. Let it fill you.
How do I keep going?
Read. Read intriguing books you find in your favorite used bookshop, not just the ones everyone on the internet recommends. Read people’s stories. Read made-up stories. Read less self-help books. Read slowly. Read widely, and notice the way language makes you feel. Notice all you don’t know. Notice the paths words can pave. Notice how you, too, can write any plot you want, at any time.
How do I keep going?
Practice not getting frustrated when your daughter takes 45 minutes to walk around the block. Learn something from her unabashed desire to take forever. Follow her lead instead of assuming she’s slowing you down. Notice the urge to keep moving when what she, what you, actually need is to stay right there, where you are, for longer than is comfortable. Ask yourself what you can take longer at. Pay attention to what you miss when you believe faster is the only way to get somewhere.
How do I keep going?
Keep tabs on all the ways you’ve been taught to do things alone, to figure things out alone, to manage alone. Give yourself permission to unlearn ways of being that go against our human nature, that go against what it means to love, what it means to need. Lean into the discomfort of requiring support. Know you’ll be doing this unlearning for a lifetime.
How do I keep going?
Read poems you don’t understand; try to understand. Write poems that are bad, that no one but you will see, that don’t do anything impressive but help you say what you need to say. Let the relief of saying it be enough of a reason to write.
How do I keep going?
Allow your expectations of yourself and others be fluid instead of rigid. Raise them when you can; lower them when you must. Let what you and others are capable of shift as life does. Let this fluidity add to your capacity for real, true compassion.
How do I keep going?
Stop striving for extraordinary. Let ordinary move you. Let ordinary pull you in as much as the big, booming things. Thoroughly enjoy a green olive. Two green lights in a row. A living room dance party. A good view of the moon. And maybe let yourself be boring sometimes. Let ordinary remind you of what really matters.
How do I keep going?
See beyond yourself whenever possible. See what happens when you de-center your own singular life and show up for the pains and joys of other people. See what shifts in you when you tether yourself to your inherent connectedness by way of empathy. See what changes when you stop thinking about yourself so much. I say this so lovingly
How do I keep going?
Put a glass of water on your side table. Set out your clothes for tomorrow. Put the coffee on Brew At 5:45am so it’s ready in the morning. Roll your yoga mat out so it’s there, waiting. Prep the veggies ahead of time. Keep your phone in the other room. Take care of your future self with what you can do now.
How do I keep going?
Notice the places you’re actually capable of making changes but are trying to convince yourself you’re not. Let this noticing not be a source of shame, but a source of radical honesty; let radical honesty be a tool of support instead of a tool of punishment.
How do I keep going?
Ask for help. Go to your therapy appointments and tell the truth there. Embrace new ways of getting to the root. Grow your own capacity which, in turn, will allow you to look at the world with more open, honest eyes. Try to look people in the eye. Make small talk that turns into meaningful talk with the local man at the coastal bakery. Go to bed early. Try to embody patience with drivers in a hurry. Try to reign in your snap-judgments and quick reactions with others. Try to remember everyone was once a baby; notice how this changes the way you view people you might initially only harbor anger towards. Let your heart open more. Then some more. You aren’t here for long.
How do I keep going?
Trust nothing will fall apart if you stop taking it all so seriously. Let it be looser.
How do I keep going?
Remind yourself that feeling lost now doesn’t mean you will permanently be lost. Lost might be a sensation, a fear, a longing, or perhaps even a reality that will widen and narrow and widen again. Yet losing yourself might, at times, be necessary to make way for something new to arrive – and you never know what could be possible when you allow that opening, that opposition of knowing, that anything-ness on its way.
How do I keep going?
Remember that everything will change, more times and in more ways than you can imagine. Remember what is possible in change. Try not to be so afraid of it. Try not to get so comfortable thinking you already know how things will go that you keep yourself from the very momentum you’re seeking. Be open to it so it can find you. It will find you eventually — just not always in the ways you might think.
Thanks, as always, for being here.
△ The power of changing your mind
△ This lovely piece on time and travel from
△ Making kin with disability, from
△ Rebecca Solnit on slow and radical change
△ Pema Chodron’s wisdom forever
△ The beauty of these photographs (NYT)
△ A poem I have been thinking of lately
△ This perfect teeny tart from one of my favorites, Brickmaiden Breads
With care,
Lisa
This line really jumped out at me: "Notice how un-alone you really are while you make soup."
❤️
I am crying so much right now. I'm having such a hard time this January. Thank you for keeping this space on the internet. I sent myself a few lines on whatsapp so that I can read them later this week when I need to.