WHEN DO YOU FEEL BEST ABOUT YOURSELF?

My New Jersey family sent me a book of writing prompts for Christmas, 52 Lists for Togetherness (Sasquatch Books, Seattle).  I was surprised that they knew me so well.  It's hard to pick the right book for someone else. Many of the writing prompts are about connections, ways to love, respect, admire and appreciate those around us. I don't resonate to all the lists, but to many I do.  Here are a few you may want to have a go at:

• List the Friends, Family, Coworkers, Mentors and Others who come to mind when you hear the word Community.
• List everything you feel grateful for at this present point in your life.
• List the ways your life is different now from how it was one year ago.
• List the mantras or guiding words you want to live by.
• List the things that you prefer to do alone.
• List the lessons you have learned from people older than you.
• List the ways you would describe yourself to someone who wants to get to know you at your core.  What unique qualities make up your being?
• List the places where your most significant relationships grew. 
• List the things that make you feel loved and supported by others.
• List the ways you like to love and support others.
• Chose someone close to you and list the times you have seen them at their happiest. 

Each list item then has an Action bullet, like "choose a relationship to focus on," or "share the words that guide you with someone who is struggling," or "decide how best to raise the happiness quotient of someone close to you the next time they're blue" and so on. It's a nice project to begin the day or end it.  

One of the Lists sparked a conversation with another couple.  The prompt is, "List when you feel best about yourself."  I said "When I feel loved."  The two men in the conversation both picked occasions of professional success, recognition or competence.  The other woman picked something related to her pride in her family.  She and I are also professionals but neither of us said we feel best when we do our jobs particularly well.  

Someone said the question felt manipulative.  But there's no right or wrong answer.  Everyone is different. We receive society's conditioning differently and are raised differently.  Our answers may vary from year to year as our life experiences grow.  A sampling of 4 yields no conclusions. But I am interested in thinking about the answers.  Strangely, I found a poem that fits my own choice, just ran across it when reading another book.  The poem is by Raymond Carver (1938-1988) who died of lung cancer.  Called Late Fragment, the poem reads,

And did you get what

you wanted from this life even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Carver wrote the poem while he was dying, the final poem in his last published work.  It is inscribed on his tombstone.  I am new to Carver's work, but I have learned that brevity is a hallmark of his.  Did you get what you wanted from this life even though you're dying? he's asked.  "I did" he says with confidence. He is a man beloved.  I like his contentment and assurance.  Feeling himself beloved on earth brings peace.  No wonder this short poem was chosen for his grave. 

It's good to know ourselves, isn't it?  And to find others, even a long dead American poet, who feel the same.  Are you in the mood to try one of the prompts?  Or create your own?  They don't take long.  Nina Naomi