Circles of Care | Sunlight

September 22, 2024
13 pages

This first Sunlight Paper offers a simple principle for how to direct your attention, given the many scales of reality that shape our experience of life from moment to moment.

Illustrated by hand by Jonathan J. Harris

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Circles of Care

A principle for scaling attention

Begin with your body — how does it feel?Does it need movement, a nap, or a meal?Or does it feel rested, nourished, and fitPrepared for the actions to which you’ll commit?

Move on to your mind — what is its state?Is it filled up with worries and wishes and hates?Or does it feel empty, steady, and clearReady to welcome whatever appears?

Now to your home — do you love where you live?Is it asking for something it needs you to give?Or does it support you with shelter and heat?Is it grounding and joyful and cozy and neat?

And then to your family, neighbors, and friendsAnd all of the people on whom you depend ⁠—⁠Is love at the heart of your web of relationsWith kindness, compassion, and fine conversation?

And then to the work that you do every day —Do you come to it gladly as if it were play?Do you put into practice your personal giftsCreating improvements and positive shifts?

And then to the help that you give and receive —Enlivening wishes and answering needsResponding to people and projects and placeSupporting the health of our planet in space

And then to this curious world that we share —With its structures and systems and circles of careEach of us playing our own little partFinding our medicine, messages, art

For what is this world but a series of livesReflecting each other with myriad eyesEach with their lenses and visions and viewsEach with the feeling of needing to choose

And what is this world, but a story we tell —A dream with no end, an alarm with no bell?To wake from the story and see it as suchTo swim in the dream and savor the touch

These Circles of Care — an invisible mapTo help us awaken, embody, adaptTo the story of life that we choose to createAnd the world that emerges to which we relate

From body, to mind, to home, and to loveTo work and to help — below as aboveThese are the scales of the story of youThis is the world that you call into view

For you’re in the worldAnd the world is in youYou make it, it makes youIt’s ancient, it’s new

So what feels aliveMost fertile, and true?What are you sensingAnd what will you do?

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Published September 22, 2024