Know that We are Connected

“Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.”

~ Lynn Ungar

Seconds

“The world is too grand to reshape with babble.”

~ Jim Harrison

Daron LarsonJanuary 12, 2020Jim Harrison, poetry, light, darkness, time, impermanence, connection Comment

Inhabited Simplicity

"Holiness is reached not through effort or will, but by stopping; by an inward coming to rest; a place from which we can embody the spirit of all our holy days, a radical, inhabited simplicity, where we live in a kind of ongoing surprise and with some wonder and appreciation."

~ David Whyte

My Life is an Open Book

"My life is an open book. It lies here
on a glass tabletop, its pages shamelessly exposed,
outspread like a bird with hundreds of thin paper wings.

It is a biography, needless to say,
and I am reading and writing it simultaneously
in a language troublesome and private."

~ Billy Collins

Practice in LifeDaron LarsonJune 11, 2017poetry, Billy Collins, narrative, life, story, impermanence, self, noticing, paying attention, self/other, connectionComment

Get Caught Up in Minutiae or See the Texture

"When we get caught up in the minutiae, the details that make us all different, there's two ways of seeing that. You can see the texture of that person, the qualities that make them unique. Or you can go to war about it – say, That person is different from me, I don't like you, so let's battle."

~ Mahershala Ali

Daron LarsonJanuary 30, 2017film, actors, self/other, society, religion, war, conflict, Mahershala Ali, identity, family, connection, relationshipsComment

One Another's Lives

"Poetry helps us imagine one another's lives."

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

Friendliness ResistanceDaron LarsonFebruary 17, 2016Naomi Shihab Nye, poetry, kindness, attention, self/other, connection, empathyComment

Who Would You Be?

"Isn't it funny how no baby is born racist, yet every baby cries when they hear the cries of another. No matter the gender, culture, or color — proving that, deep down, we were meant to connect and care for each other."

~ Prince Ea

Happiness is Home

“Happiness doesn’t lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap..."

~ Dennis Lehane

Daron LarsonJuly 12, 2015Dennis Lehane, home, happiness, empathy, connectionComment

The Only Calibration that Counts

"That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember."

~ Ted Hughes

Magnanimity, Practice in LifeDaron LarsonApril 14, 2015Ted Hughes, childhood, self, identity, growing up, life, surprise, fear, suffering, emotion, connection, relationships, poetsComment

Our Desire to Transcend Isolation

"Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration. And this is where I think language came from."

Interwoven

A son and his father, I knew
from their looks, the son with his
right hand on the handrail,
the father, left hand on the left,
and in the middle they were
holding hands

~ Ted Kooser

See Out, Feel In, Notice Flow, Friendliness ResistanceDaron LarsonOctober 15, 2014poetry, Ted Kooser, family, connection, vulnerability, aging, kindness, interdependenceComment

The Residue of Fear

"I spent so much of my life telling people the things they wanted to hear instead of the things they needed to, told myself I wasn't meant to be anyone's conscience because I still had to figure out being my own, so sometimes I just wouldn't say anything, appeasing ignorance with my silence." ~ Clint Smith

Daron LarsonAugust 24, 2014Clint Smith, TED, silence, speech, language, society, connection, risk, vulnerability, truth, fearComment

Here on Earth

I am listening in a cafeteria at breakfast.
The women's voices rustle, fulfill themselves
In a ritual no doubt necessary.
I glance sidelong at their moving lips
And I delight in being here on earth

Daron LarsonJuly 29, 2014Czesław Miłosz, poetry, connection, present, humanity, community, societyComment

Powerful Empathy Machine

"Movies are the most powerful empathy machine in all the arts. When I go to a great movie I can live somebody else's life for a while. I can walk in somebody else's shoes. I can see what it feels like to be a member of a different gender, a different race, a different economic class, to live in a different time, to have a different belief."~ Roger Ebert