272 - Just Live Today

Recently I gathered together in my hometown with my dad and siblings , and we went through my mom's things. It's been six months since she passed and it was time.  It was a beautiful and intimate weekend and it reminded me of our impermanence, and the importance of paying attention to our lives, to do what lights us up, and the need to create a life filled with beauty and meaning. 

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The music for this episode is Threads by The Light Meeting.
Produced by: Grey Tanner

Transcript

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (00:01.044)
Welcome to the podcast, my loves. It is a delight to have you here.

I wanna tell you a story of something that happened to me a couple weeks ago. I took myself to my hometown. I drove myself there alone and back and it's about an 11 hour trip. And it's the longest road trip I've ever taken by myself and I was actually very excited about it. There's something about solo travel where if you're just gonna listen to an audio book, which I did,

both there and back, along with having quiet time, where you're just with the music and you're just with the moment and you have the landscape in front of you of travel where your brain gets to wander in different sorts of ways. You sort yourself, you meet yourself in different ways. And that was definitely part of that experience. And I was driving to my hometown.

and I got in at about 2 a.m. I left later in the afternoon on the day that I left because I had some work things to do. I leading flow school that morning and got on the road later after I finished hosting flow school online. And as I was driving over the mountain pass to drop down into my hometown, it was empty, right? The roads are empty and in the Montana mountains and...

The moon was a full moon. And there's a thing that I do sometimes that is not really planned. But sometimes when I am somewhere where there is a vastness, maybe it is in the mountains, sometimes it is in the ocean or like.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (01:58.508)
as I'm like standing in the ocean, the vastness of the ocean. So it's usually in those places, but there is a hollering that I do. The best language I have for it is that I holler into the world. And it is like, I can't even tell you the sounds if I were to do it in this microphone. don't any of our ears would be delighted by that.

because it is loud and it feels primal to me where I am in the middle of something so big and where large ... remind me of how small I am, right? How insignificant I am and also this grandeur of life, the gift it is to be alive, the beauty ...

of so much interconnectedness. It's all of these things and that perhaps I am small, but I am a part of it. Like I can be with the ocean and in the ocean. So then I'm part of the ocean and I'm with the mountains and I'm part of it. I'm not separate from that experience. I am part of the experience. And there's this call that comes out of me that

that feels very primal. And I was driving over this mountain pass and you're like, how is this related to yoga, Bonnie? Remember, this is the practice of paying attention. This is me driving and saying, you know what I need to do? I need to stop at the next pullout under this full moon in these snowy mountains. I need to get out of my car and I need to go holler to the wild. And I did that.

There's nobody around. There's no cars driving by. It's 2 a.m. and I stood out overlooking all of these mountains and hollered. And you know what I did not expect? I did not expect the echo. I can feel it in me still of me. There's like no timidness to.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (04:26.124)
to this kind of like yell, this holler, where, you know, if we live close, if you share an apartment, if you're in a neighborhood, I think there's this constriction of our voice. And, you know, I talk about all the time of owning the hell out of your voice. And what does that mean? And it means a lot of different things, but I also think it's the literal noises that we allow to come out of us and to start to pay attention to where we constrict and where

We get quieter in our throat, in our mouth, in our body, and what we need to allow out of us in order to move and shift things. I think it's so pivotal to our experience and to find ways and places for that to exist is sometimes very tricky. And it's part of the gift, I think, of living where I do, where I'm close to the ocean. can go find some mountains that are

quite empty, can go holler and it doesn't have to make sense, but it just gets to be loud. Just gets to be loud and can scream out into the nothingness, right? And I know that that can be an experience. You get in your car and you could have that experience there too. That's not necessarily screaming into the wild, but I think that in general, allowing yourself to be

Loud. Where it doesn't have to make sense. It feels important. Anyway, I'm there. I'm in the mountains. I'm hollering. And then the mountains are echoing back to me. And I was so damn giddy by myself. Uh, and it was a whole gift. It truly was a gift. And I was traveling. was traveling to my hometown because it has been six months since my mom has passed.

and it was time to go through her things. It was time to organize, it was time to go through all the sticky notes and the papers. It was time to support my dad in navigating.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (06:41.294)
navigating this new normal for him and to create some order for a little bit of a reset. And I'm really grateful that we were able to have that time between where it's been six months and y'all it has been a winter. I get to spend a lot of things in this past six months. It feels very short, like very short. I cannot believe my mom is gone. And sometimes it like,

rocks me in in surprising ways where I've realized that she's gone and other times it feels like it's been a long time and I don't know it's it's it's it's a wild experience and

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (07:29.015)
And I...

I knew that going into that experience, would be.

Like I didn't know what to expect. I was trying to just be really open with how it would all flow. And I drove because I figured I would be driving back like a tub of my stuff from when I was a kid, which I did. And, you know, it's just way easier to do that than to try to fly things. And there's a lot more leniency. So I drove there and it was physically demanding. It was full days as me and my three siblings and my dad and

It was emotionally demanding and then such a gift too to like touch the things that my mom touched last to like pick up the things where she left them to see the random things shoved in places. I was going through this box that she must have deemed as important things, things she wanted to say. There was everything from the very first thank you note that my oldest who just

is turning 19. Like the very first thank you note he ever wrote her as a child was in that box, along with her social security card, along with a labeled picture, a copy of a picture of ancestors, along with a happy Mother's Day note that my little sister who's 35 wrote when she was 10. And then her...

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (09:01.202)
college things and there's just so much randomness and so like bringing some organization to her things so that we can actually go through them. she had a stack of sticky notes where she was keeping track of her bills over the past five years on sticky notes for her monthly like monthly bill keeping rather than in a notebook, which she'd done other times. And like it was just as fascinating and intimate. It's so intimate.

to go through some of these things that are their private notes and they could be like very small things. And I have a sticky note. I have a bunch of sticky notes up behind my computer and things that people have said to me or quotes that have meant a lot or pictures. And when my mom was here last, she left a sticky note here on my desk that said, just live today.

and I have that sticky note, you know?

That really was her mantra.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (10:11.086)
And it was really fascinating. It like this continues to be an initiation. And I share this here because, because I think it's important. So bear with me, stick with me here. That I think in our practice of paying attention, that in our desire to create a life that feels full and alive and that we are desirous

Own freedom for the freedom of others to move and to choose and to love and to do things that light us up and set us on like set us on fire in a way we're like this thing this thing has to be said or shared or created or I want to exist in this way in the world that sometimes we can limit ourselves and say who am I to do it this way who am I to start the thing

Do I even know enough or who was going to listen to me or this isn't even a big deal. It doesn't even feel like work to me. Why should I create this? This feels too easy. It's something should feel hard. If it's to exist. I'm there's a lot of people out there because I work with some of them who are like, this feels too easy. Like, can this really be my job? Because this feels like something that just comes naturally to me. I'm like, that's exactly why it can be a thing that you do.

Because if we were truly leaning into our gifts and saying, what lights me up? What feels like it flows out of me without any effort, but other people recognize as a gift. That's what you have to give to the world. And I guess this story of my mom and this initiation of me and my own life of this reminder that we are here for a fucking moment. Like so small, so small. And here I am putting my mom's things in the ancestor pocket. Y'all like that's a trip.

She has buckets of things from ancestors and from stories of people. You know, I grew up in the Mormon culture. I grew up as a Mormon person and part of the Mormon stories is the crossing of the plains. And people back in the 1800s who wanted to believe as the Mormons did, they walked across the plains. They created havoc.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (12:34.296)
havoc as they were doing so. There is a lot of ugliness with that kind of journey, right? And there was polygamy in that journey as well, which is problematic in other sorts of ways, just because of the way it was done. Anyway, there's a lot of things, right?

So that is part of my mom's lines and lines of ancestors. And that's my lines as well. And, and she just really was interested in all these people that came before and the women who came before us. And I'm so grateful for that as a part of the legacy, but she has these boxes from different people, or about different people and different stories. And I'm going through her things.

I'm thinking, where do I put her diploma? As an adult, after all of her kids were grown, she went to college and she got her associate's degree. And she ended up working at the college and she loved it. And now, what do I do with her diploma?

put it on the ancestor box because now she is part of the ancestors. Such a trip. Like such a trip.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (13:57.919)
and

There's things that we don't want and so we donated and other things that we can have go to like a vintage consignment store and other things we kept, but they don't mean the same to us, right? Or we let the grandkids choose some of these little toys that she would always let them play with and then we kept random things. And one of my siblings threw my mom's retainer into my, into my

my bag of toiletries so then I found it. like, so we had play and then we would cry. And then I was like, what the hell do we do with this now? And it's so interesting. It's made me think about my things and the way that we hold things or don't hold things and what's really important. And that we are really here for a short time. And I never got to see my mom go gray.

Maybe I'll get to be gray. My hair I think is grayer than hers. And we don't know how much time we have here.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (15:08.522)
and we're going to have our items delegated to maybe an ancestor box.

things you thought were important. And all of this made me think about my old neighbors.

So I had these neighbors that lived next to me and they would spend a lot of time in their backyard and these two women and they would get new flowers and they're weeding and they have their water feature and they were so proud of their backyard. They spent a significant amount of time really honing and pruning and crafting a yard that felt really lovely, like so lovely.

I would talk to them over the fence and go and be in their backyard. And it was just so sweet. And then they decided to move and they moved. The new people moved in and they didn't touch the backyard and everything died and weeds grew over everything. And you know, you can clean that up. It can come back from that. But they decided that they wanted a deck and they put a deck over the patio.

and over all of the plants and where everything was and they ripped it out and ripped it out or covered it completely up.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (16:31.822)
And I remember watching them do that and feeling so sad, feeling so sad that like there was all of this time and care and attention for this space. And then all of sudden these other people come in and they don't even care about it. And they do something totally different, like totally different, but they loved that deck and they spent time on that deck and it's exactly what they wanted. And going out,

to do, take care of my mom's things. And then driving back has me reflecting on my neighbors and on this backyard and where it was this moment for me and watching this backyard be carefully crafted and then totally done over. Where those other people, the new people didn't know the prior owners. They didn't know the care that went into that and they just did the things they wanted.

I mean, a house we can talk about and say, I'm not going to do X, Y, Z because I want to have resell value. And so I'm not going to do this thing that I want in my house because then somebody else won't want it. And so they won't buy the house eventually. Y'all they could think that it's like beautiful and still change it. Or they could hate it and then say like, that's fine. We'll buy it. We'll like redo this whole thing. Right. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

I'm gonna die and you're gonna die. We're gonna move away from our houses. We're gonna change careers. We're gonna like get divorced. We're gonna get married. We're gonna do like, I don't know, we're gonna do whatever. But I think it feels so important to take the pause moment to pay attention inside your heart, inside your body, inside your head, inside yourself to like sit with yourself and say, what do I want?

What lights me up? What makes me pay attention? Where you sit up straight, where somebody starts talking about something, you sit up straight and you're like, I want to be part of that conversation. What are those conversations you want to be a part of? When you hear people talking about them and you get lit up from the inside out, where you want to be there in that room with those people, what are the conversations and who are those people? Pay attention there because this is it. This is our life. This is our life. And

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (18:58.666)
we're gonna die and our stuff is gonna go in the ancestor box or it's gonna be thrown away or it's gonna be donated or we'll have like a random sticky note that somebody will save that we wrote down at one point in time. It's gonna be something like that. Nobody's gonna care like you care. Nobody. They're gonna build a deck over whatever you think is beautiful. So don't try to make it beautiful for somebody else. Make it beautiful for you.

What do you think is beautiful? What is a life to you that is a beautiful life? And do that because what somebody else thinks is a beautiful life is something totally different. And we are all the center of our own universe.

So nobody's waiting on me. They're worried about themselves, right? Like you're in the center of your universe. You are the only one in your head that can hear all of the thoughts and all of the fears and all of the hopes and all of the dreams and all of the desires. I can't hear those in yours. I can only hear them in mine. So I am so much more concerned with me than I am with you because like I'm stuck with myself, just like you're stuck with yourself. And so if we're with ourselves, let's make this good.

Because this is it and I'm to end up in the ancestor box and my kids are going to be all like, well, mom, what are we supposed to do with this thing? So make it mean something to you. Build the thing you want to build. Be the person that you want to be. Make the change you want to make. Be the difference that you want to see in the world. What is it that would have helped you create that? Be the leader of that.

because somebody else is going to do something else. And I think sometimes we wait on things and sometimes it's right to wait. I'm not saying we need to rush out because that's not the answer. The answer is to start paying attention. The answer is to start thinking about like, what do I want? And that is a changing, moving target sometimes, right? What I want today might be different than what I want tomorrow. And there could be overall life, what I want in my life versus like what I want in the moment. And then those two sometimes contend, which is fine.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (21:14.668)
Like that's fine, that's fine. But I know I'm being called into this attention to my life because of my mom's death. And I guess I'm bringing that tear to you and maybe helping you call some attention into your life and say like, we don't have to wait. We don't have to wait. And we don't have to hold back for fear that

somebody else won't find it beautiful because the odds are they're going to make something different than us. And only we can make the thing that we think is beautiful. And the way that each of us bring that beauty that comes through us to the world makes a difference. Each one of us that brings the thing that is part of who we are impacts all of us. And even if that feels like a big claim, which it kind of is,

Like, we start one person at a time.

One person at a time.

One action at a time, one attention to detail at a time.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (22:30.934)
And it matters.

It matters. This is it. One life, one body.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (22:41.836)
It doesn't really matter what you believe of what comes after this life because it's gonna be different than this. And whether you believe there's nothing and this is it, right? Or if you believe that we continue on in some way, like it doesn't really matter because it's different than what this is.

We just have to show up right now.

Just live today. That's what we have to do. That's what we have to do. So make your life beautiful.

and whatever that means.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (23:22.476)
I have a sign on my wall that I can see from this microphone and it says, when I practice looking for beauty, it's all I can see.

Mm.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (23:43.03)
It is a gift to be here with you. It's a gift to share his voice and it's a gift to think about how

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (23:56.234)
this podcast exists. If I were to die tomorrow, this podcast exists.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (24:06.107)
and

I am grateful.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (24:12.736)
I am grateful for my mom, I am grateful for you. I'm grateful for the mixture of bravery and curiosity that I continue to lean on and y'all, is not easy to ask yourself these big questions and to sit with it and then to choose and then to move. You might break your own heart. You might create change that shifts in big ways and I understand that and I love that people find me.

and work with me and choose me as a mentor or come to flow school often in times of transition of times where they're like something has to change. Something has to change something. And then people find me. Maybe that's where you are. Maybe.

This feels like a good moment. Speaking about flow school, I am hosting three in-person flow schools this year. June 7th through the 11th in Vancouver, British Columbia, July 7th through 11th, just outside of London. So if you live across the pond, like if you live in Europe somewhere, that's opportunity to come with me July 7th through the 11th. And then here in Portland, Oregon, November 10th through the 14th.

I love it when people come to Portland because then we also do dinner at my house, which is so fun. so signups for that are open and live. only take 18 people per training because I love to give one-on-one attention. Let's make it in person, y'all. I can sit here and listen to this podcast, but you can also just come and be with me in the room. I can do both. I can do both.

Bonnie Weeks (she/her) (25:58.562)
I am sending you big, giant love in this life that we are creating.

Mm.

Thanks for making it beautiful alongside of me.