Into the Great Wide Open…

It’s never easy leaving paradise.

imageI am a myriad of emotions: excitement, anxiety, joy, nostalgia…

More than anything, I feel immense gratitude.  I have so much loving energy in my life, so many wonderfully supportive and generous friends, friends who have asked me to “scream my name in the place that steals your heart,” friends who have told me that they “will always be here to put life back together” with me if I get derailed, friends who have reminded me to breathe and accept the present moment as the greatest gift of life.

Yesterday, a friend sent me this quote.  Thank you, Whitman, for being a g.

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

– Walt Whitman

About to get on my flight in San Diego.  As Petty says (and he usually says it best), “Into the great wide open, under the sky so blue…”

2 thoughts on “Into the Great Wide Open…

Leave a comment