Today I was lucky enough to stumble on a beautiful poem by Hafez (translated by Daniel Ladinsky) called "With That Moon Language".

...

Admit something: 
Everyone you see, you say to them, "Love me."

Of course you do not do this out loud, 
otherwise someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, 
this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives 
with a full moon in each eye that is always saying,

with that sweet moon language,

what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?

...

I stumbled on this poem while watching a video titled "Self-Compassion: An Antidote to Shame". It's a very interesting watch if you have the time!

The idea of the video, from what I understood, is that most of us often feel "shame", and that makes us try to fill that hole with disparate strategies ranging from the usual "chasing validation" to substance abuse. Moreover, feelings of shame engender anger and resentment, and, in general, negative thoughts.

I see it in myself. I am often ashamed of myself. Triggers for me are shame about feeling socially inadequate or incapable, which happens often in situations where there are a lot of people, sometimes also at work when I'm meeting with folks I don't know and I want to express an idea but can't.1 There's also the all-too-common sense of impostor syndrome, of not being good enough, which is also shame.

See how I inadvertently worded the above? I didn't mean it, but I used the words "inadequate" and "socially incapable".2 This is exactly what shame feels like to me. A sense of inadequacy. My main way to deal with it is to look for some sort of external validation. Funny thing is that even when I do get it, it does nothing to dent my feelings. I've noticed that whenever someone gives me a compliment, my knee-jerk reaction is to think they're trying to get something else out of me, or they don't really mean it. I can't even take a compliment!

The guy in the video explains that "shame" needs to first be reframed from being a "sense that validates your feelings of inadequacy" to "the feeling that we wish to be loved". Every time you feel shame, tell yourself "ah, I'm craving some love right now".

Be compassionate to yourself. Rather than self-criticizing, or getting angry with others, see that what you're experiencing is just your own wish for happiness.

Anyway...

This is such a sweet but powerful, immensely powerful little piece of poetry. It says what we all know within ourselves but often hide or attempt to forget: what we most deeply desire is to be loved. It goes further: same as you, everyone else also wants to be loved; why not give them what they so desperately want? Wouldn't it be nice to just spread love around?

It sounds so easy, doesn't it? In part I suppose it is; the only requirement is that you need to suspend your usual "me me me"–focused thinking and make "the other" the most important person in the room, or even the most important person in the universe! But while this is possible, I would imagine that for most of us it's hard to suspend our usual thought patterns for any appreciable amount of time. We quickly revert to thinking about ourselves, our worries, and desires.

...

Yesterday we went to the supermarket. I ended up walking around the place with my youngest while my wife and the oldest were getting some stuff. All of a sudden an elderly man stopped in front of us and smiled at both me and my son. We chatted a bit, but I was almost dumbstruck by the beauty, the fullness of that smile. I'd read of such things in books, but had never experienced a smile so "all-encompassing" that it makes you feel like it's okay to just be who you are, that you're perfect as is.

I don't know who this man was, or maybe he was drunk or high on something3 (if yes, I want to know what it was!). If things were different I would've loved to ask him how I could be like him.

Well... Maybe I'm reading too much into what really was a random occurrence with a nicer-than-usual stranger. But see, we turn back again to the idea of "spreading love around". This man didn't say anything especially enlightening to me; I just felt his "energy" was "there", his presence. And with even just such a simple thing, I feel like my day became special all of a sudden.

...

The video above ends with a simple mantra the guy suggests one can tell oneself every morning.

Just as all beings wish to be loved so do I, too, now, and throughout the day, wish to be loved

Thoughts

  • I've been itching to get back into playing Go semi-consistently. I was never really all that good, but there was a period when I would play almost every day, and go over games and whatnot. It's a lot of fun if you like those sorts of things!
    • My main obstacle is "time" (of course) and not knowing where to start.
  • Yesterday someone shared the name of a Spanish author who actually lives close to me! I've complained in the past about how I find it hard reading in Spanish, and I think this is a great opportunity to read something that's more in my "vernacular", and even written by one of my contemporaries.
    • I've also been thinking more and more about writing in Spanish. It would be fun to post something written in it every once in a while!
  • Today I had a terrible experience: I clicked on a song suggested by YouTube and it was pretty cool, so I left it playing. After a while, though, something started to feel off, like it was too "flat" in some way. I went to check the account, and to my horror I saw the disclaimer "everything in this channel is made with AI"! No wonder it felt soulless.
    • I looked online, and it turns out that YouTube doesn't (hopefully "yet") have an option to hide all AI-generated content. Thankfully I found a post by surasshu (wonderful musician in his own right; highly recommended) where he shares a blocklist for AI music on YouTube and explains how to set it up. It's not perfect, but it's definitely better than nothing! Thanks, surasshu!
  • In retrospect, today's entry was A LOT harder to write than any I've done so far. It's the first time I find myself rewriting stuff in the middle of it.
    • I think what was happening is that I wanted to talk about the poem and the video at the same time, but I didn't really understand everything about the latter, and the poem was taking me in a completely different direction.

Footnotes

  1. Funnily enough, this doesn't always happen! I think it has to do with my general stress level or how tired I am. It's been many years that I've been trying to determine why sometimes I'm sociable and sometimes I'm not. ↩

  2. I'm also realizing that yesterday I did this as well. In the thoughts section I was wondering what happens when "impostor syndrome" is real, which is itself more impostor syndrome! ↩

  3. While on acid I've experienced tremendous, undifferentiated, and unconditional love and awe for everything around me. ↩