30 prayers for the next 30 years
In no particular order...
I turned 30 yesterday.
Here’s a little list of prayers and intentions for the next 30 years of my life…
May I continue striving to take life less and less personally.
May I resist the notion that I know what there is to know about the places I inhabit, the people in my life, and the ways the universe works.
May I relate to resources with as much grace as I can muster.
May I remember to slow down and taste my food.
May I engage sexuality with more reverence, presence, and mystery. Less gratification and compulsion.
May I continue to nurture community-building and connecting people as a higher calling.
May I show up for my friends in a way that inspires bravery.
May I strive to both move my body and sit in silence regularly, no matter how many times I fall off the wagon.
May the ways I show love become a deeper source of (healthy) personal pride. Cooking. Hand-written notes. Hosting. Good chats. Hugs.
May I continually resist the capture of my desire and energy by the technology through which so much of life is mediated.
May I keep feeding my hunger for knowledge and love of books.
May my commitment to peace and justice become more tangible and central in the way I use my energy.
May I remember to take myself less seriously, every day.
May I allow meaning to arrive on its own schedule instead of over-efforting trying to find or create it.
May a willingness to grieve support my renewal amidst loss.
May the ways I spend my time be less influenced by an aversion to boredom.
May I choose more often to push through my shyness and take risks socially.
May I develop deeper reciprocity with the more-than-human world.
May I spend less time seeing my life as a series of problems I need to solve.
May I find a way to keep deepening and renewing friendships across great distances.
May I strive to gracefully create space for others in the rooms I inhabit.
May I remain interruptable, permeable, and soft enough to keep evolving.
May I (to steal from Rilke) remember to cherish all that is unresolved in my life and my heart.
May I become more skilled at conserving energy that would otherwise be burned up by incessant thinking.
May I cultivate a healthy willingness to engage in conflict and confrontation.
May I reduce my reliance on and trust in concepts and categories.
May doing bits and riffing with my friends persevere, especially when things feel unbearably heavy.
May the communities I enmesh myself in be animated and sustained by interdependence.
May I embrace the demands caregiving makes on my life as a higher calling.
May I learn to honor my longings, even when they’re inconvenient or overwhelming.
So thoughtful, Oisin. Wishing you joy on the path.