How to Make a Life
First: Take everything you’ve ever learned and everything
You’ve yet to discover and place it in a box labeled Thank You.
Second: Take a picture of your face and remember
That in ten years time you will be amazed at how gorgeous you were.
Be amazed now.
Third: Find someplace to live.
Make sure it has the ability to let light fall
Across the room in such a way that every so often,
You’ll stop and mouth the words “Ah, sunlight.”
Before you finish dusting the books.
Don’t let the books get dusty.
Open them and reread your favorite sentences
Or give the books away.
Fourth: Fall in love.
Touch. More than you think.
Have a child if you want one.
If you don’t, don’t.
Let your child out into the world
Discovering for themselves just how magical
It is. Or it isn’t.
It’s theirs to decide.
Give your child a lot of books.
Fifth: Get a job.
Remember this job is not who you are.
You get to open the silk door of You,
And decide, over and over, as many times as you like,
Just who you are.
Your job will feed you and your children if you have them.
If you forget this step,
You will be reminded of it if you ever lose your job.
“No, my job can’t be who I am
because here I am still standing in line at the post office tapping
my feet, thinking my thoughts and moving my arms,
and yet I have no job but still, I am.
I am.”
Sixth: Do yoga.
Let your body discover what it’s like to move
without your brain holding it’s hand.
Tell your brain to take a hike.
Let your body believe fully in it’s own powers.
Let every person you’ve stored inside your muscles out every so often,
to breathe.
Seventh: Do things that make you feel good.
Let your joy be contagious and spread through
Your home, your job, your children.
Let it spread through the world
Like a virus so that when you forget it,
Every so often, you’ll catch it from someone else.
Jen Pastiloff, after a particularly focused Annie Carpenter class on Sep 20, 2011
