Summer days on the deck, sauteed corn mushrooms, zucchini, watermelon, greens and cashew cream🙌
hello there, friend.
I’ve been thinking about something for a few weeks now, and it started, of all places, in a tattoo chair.
I was at Snow Tattoo a while back, watching Sarah work on a piece from her Veneraris collection. It’s her signature fine line style, pearls and jewels and flowing water, drawn to follow the natural curve of the body. She told me part of the idea behind it comes from an old teaching in Buddhist and Hindu thought called Indra’s Net. The short version is simple. Everything is connected, and what happens to one part of us touches every other part.
It stuck with me, even though it’s a truth I’ve heard before. It’s one I keep relearning.
That’s really been the theme running through everything I’ve written here in Turbo Goth Universe this year, even when I only half knew it at the time. Every Moment Is a Teacher was about how everything we go through connects to something bigger. The hard conversation, the detour, the ordinary Tuesday, all of it connected, all of it teaching us something if we let it. The Seat of Your Own Power was about taking an active role in your own life instead of waiting around for things to happen to you. Even when we surrender turns out to be less about giving up and more about finally trusting that you were always carrying it together with everyone and everything around you.
I keep coming back to this because I think the quiet, everyday kind of struggle a lot of us carry comes from forgetting how connected we actually are. From treating ourselves like we’re the only ones going through what we’re going through, judging ourselves for it, and pulling away from people instead of leaning on them. I think that’s most of us, most days.
Which is maybe why this line stopped me when I read it recently.
“Self-compassion after a lapse in behavior predicts return to the desired behavior. Self-criticism after a lapse predicts further lapses.”
That’s from a piece on Start Early Today about why self-compassion outperforms self-criticism in basically every study that’s ever measured it. It works because it’s more accurate. It’s kind too, but accuracy is what makes it effective. Being hard on yourself after a setback tells your brain you’re on your own and under threat. Being kind to yourself tells your brain you’re still connected, still safe, still worth trying again.
The same piece quotes the Buddha, and I’ve been carrying this one around all week.
“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
As much as anybody in the entire universe. Equal measure, exactly. Same worth, same claim to kindness, as anyone else you’d extend it to easily.
There’s a companion idea in another post from that site, about why chasing happiness directly tends to push it further away. The research keeps landing on the same conclusion older wisdom traditions reached first. Happiness shows up as a result of connection, meaning, and contributing to something outside yourself. It’s something you build through participating in life, more than something you chase directly. (Here’s that post, if you want the full research behind it.)
Which brings me to the song I keep playing on repeat while writing this. Sarah and I recorded “Love Will Be All There Is” a while back, and at the time I remember thinking the title was almost too earnest for a band that leans this hard into distortion and heavy beats. Now I think we were writing toward the same idea Sarah later put into ink and I keep putting into words. Underneath the noise, the detours, the hard days, there’s one steady thing connecting all of it, and it’s love, and there’s plenty of it to go around. If you’ve got twenty minutes today, let it play loud and see what I mean.
So here’s what I keep coming back to.
“Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.” — Marianne Williamson
“Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.” — Dalai Lama
Both point to the same simple practice. Notice what’s already good. Take one small action today instead of waiting for the right mood to show up.
If you take one thing from me today, friend, let it be this. You are more connected to the people and moments around you than it feels like most days. Go easy on yourself today. Reach out to someone. Let someone reach back.
Watermelon salad, one pot fusili and beans, banger Stew! (yet to be blogged)
More soon, Paolo
p.s. If any of this landed, I’d love to hear which line stuck. Hit reply, or drop a comment, or upgrade to paid :)
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