To Manage, Naomi Shihab Nye
Meditation
If you were to write a letter to your younger self, what would you say? When asked in an interview how she motivates herself when she loses creative inspiration, poet Rupi Kaur once said, “I think about what the 15-year-old me needed, and I write about that. It’s a writing prompt that always works for me.” To look at our younger selves through the wisdom we have today – asking what it is we needed, what our dreams were, our greatest frustrations, our existential crises – can greatly put into perspective much of what we have today and all that we’ve accomplished over the course of our lives.
“That’s what a minute said to an hour/Without me you are nothing.” The lives of our former selves continue to build on each other. What did you need then? What do you need now? How might you look back on this era in your life years from now?
Brianna Curran, Washington, DC
