Know Thyself. —ancient Delphic maxim
If you know yourself, you know whether or not you’re a leader, the one who initiates things, or a support person, someone who faithfully follows and shows up. Both roles are important. In the Happy Body, the idea is to stop obsessing about food and exercise and relaxation. There’s no need to attend classes or go on diets or head to meditation retreats: the plan is already laid out. With these essentials taken care of, people sometimes find they have a surplus of time on their hands. When I talk to people I find that everyone has an unfulfilled dream, something they were passionate about before life took over. They sometimes fill their lives with activity—classes, workshops, etc., something convenient—yet these distractions can bypass the essential self. We become consumers instead of creators.
With this in mind, a few months ago, since we love Color Me Mine and crafting our own pottery, we put a post up on FB that we would be there one afternoon and invited people to join us. To our delight, many showed up and brought their kids. We had a lovely time, talking and laughing and creating. At the end, the objects we made created a memory of our gathering and that happy moment in time. We structured everything loosely, so when we finished, some of us went for a walk to get coffee and tea at Peet’s and we returned to an even larger group.
This anecdote is a way of offering an invitation to the Happy Body community to start reaching out and creating community wherever you are. You can meet someone in your town for tea, or a walk, or a trip to a farmer’s market—there are so many ways to come together and share resources, help one another. We’ve found that the Happy Body participants are remarkable people. By initiating a meeting, or showing up for one, connections can be formed that are energizing and inspiring. Jerzy and I will travel long distances to meet someone special. We value these connections and we make time for it. By meeting people this way you can sometimes drop many superficial patterns of relating, you can quickly reach the level where you’re both simply human. This is the incentive for initiating something; there’s no bigger joy than meeting another soulful person and having a good time.
