A Valentine for You

Life is an interesting adventure.  Many wags tell us we're "human beings not human doings" and yet, life requires that we "do."  Some mystics have been able to take themselves out of the world to sit in a cave fasting and praying but that wouldn't work for most of us who have bills to pay and families to care for.  


For us, life is a dance of doing and being.  Doing done with awareness gives us insight into who we are in our deepest corners; being done with awareness gives us clarity into our relationship and connection to our selves, each other and the world around us ... and what needs to be done next to more clearly understand who we are.  Being and doing creating a mystic circle.

One of the most powerfully poetic statements of this dance was written by Dawna Markova, as she says, "on the night my father died with a shrug."  In her book I will not die an unlived life, she explains, "His heart was hollow and vacant of dreams.  He was convinced he didn't matter."  Dawna's book is a bright song reminding us that each one of us matter.  It truly is a valentine to all of us.  Below is the poem that sparked the book.

And on this celebration day of love, please remember that each one of you truly matters.

I will not die an unlived life.

by Dawna Markova

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear

of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid,

more accessible,

to loosen my heart

until it becomes a wing,

a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance,

to live so that which came to me as seed

goes to the next as blossom,

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit.