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A To-Do List For The Lost by Ruth Emeroe




1. In every tree, fairies are living. They giggle with the woodbugs and pour teeny tiny cups of tea while they listen to the wind. Go to the woods and watch the thin trees sway as the fairies climb the winding inner staircases.


2. What is the definition of found? What does it mean to know how to live?


3. On the days water pitter patters down to the grateful earth, resist the seeming safety of turning one’s focus. Go into the heavenly rain and make a choice to become it. Become a raindrop, sailing towards the green of the grasses. Become the wet coat of a woodpecker. Become a puddle, awaiting a smiling child.


4. Sing. To the flowers, to the ants, to the pebbles, to the stars, to the streams.


5. Spend a few years learning how to speak the language of the wind. Spend another few studying how the stars talk. Devote a lifetime investigating how to become a bird.


6. Always, every plant is growing. Spend an afternoon watching a leaf getting a little bit bigger. Sit in the grass for eight days waiting for a flower to open, and rejoice with jumping laughter when it does. Simple moments are made so beautiful when we pay attention.


7. Read a children’s book and re-learn the world of imagination.


8. Go to the sea and spend a year watching the diamond-like sparkles glitter across the water. Understand that magic exists within the world we live in.


9. When do you feel most alive?


10. Pretend you have never been to this earth before and see everything for the first time.


11. One chilly evening when distractions are prioritized and minds are easily wandering to far away places, resist the temptations of diversion. Instead sit quietly and wonder about the ways of the world. Run a gentle finger along your experienced skin, as if you were an unhurried lover. Touch every scar with love. Push your hand through your chest and stroke your pulsing heart as if you were petting a sleeping cat. Feel the flesh of scarlet muscle in your hand and whisper “everything will be okay”. Feel every living part of you. Lower your lips and kiss every bone. Caress every muscle. Breathe, and say “thank you”.


12. Hold your knees against your chest, and watch the clouds perform their dance. Think of how you will never see the same ones again.


13. Run far far away and live in a hole you dug yourself in the woods. Learn how to love your own company and find beauty in stillness. Come back to the busy world eventually, or don’t.

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