How is Your Family?

Weekly wisdom to level up your creative life in 3 minutes, for free.

A SHORT STORY

There is an idea in Buddhism that in difficult times, you become the Bodhisattva, the being dedicated to bringing something better into this world, something beautiful, something wise.

You quiet the mind, listen to the heart, and become still until the right action arises.

In my own stillness, I have been noticing how this can begin in the smallest of ways.

I remember how my friends in Africa never ask simply how I am doing. They always begin with, "How is your family?"

What a beautiful greeting.

It reminds us how deeply connected we are.

I first encountered this through my friend Cham, a Gambelan refugee I became friends with fifteen years ago.

I asked if I could sit with him, and he nodded. Between bites of beans and rice, we exchanged small talk. He asked about my family. I asked if he had a wife. He smiled as he told me about his daughter, then said quietly that his wife had promised she would wait for him.

"Family is survival," he told me.

His words have stayed with me.

In the stillness you and I share this week, may we reflect on them.

And may the next beautiful thing we bring into the world be as simple as asking,

How is your family?

A POEM

“Elephants 5” by Chris Abani

It is not likely that my father and I will take a walk soon
and not just because he is dead.
But he did come back in a dream to cook
me a simple dish of beans with tomatoes
and, through the steam rising from my bowl,
he smiled as he cut me a slice of bread,
vanishing slowly with every saw.
The heart is like this sometimes.
It finds the hands of your dead father
and shaves away another layer
like a thick slab of warm bread.
Sometimes that, Tadeusz. Or sometimes this.
That the lines lead you out of the labyrinth.
That the Minotaur is your toy bear thrown casually
against a chair in the dark.
That rain will come.
That rain will come.

Grateful,

Michael