One of the few bright spots of the pandemic for me was the opportunity to rediscover my love of reading. (I mean, when you’ve stress-watched the entire universe of content on HBO/Netflix/Hulu/Disney+ you are kind of forced back to old-fashioned books.) During that time I fell in love with the writings of Ann Lamott. She is hilarious, biting, honest and thought-provoking. Few other writers have made me simultaneously laugh out loud and cry.
I’m currently devouring her book Dusk Night Dawn where she recounts her own experience navigating our collective nightmare of the past couple of years. She writes:
‘The soul of genius,’ Mozart reputedly said ‘is love, love, love.’ We need to stop racing and to savor beauty, to look up from our screens at the weather, one another’s faces, the ocean, the desert, a garden, and architecture, which is another kind of garden . . . Look around and see whom you can serve. This will fill you.”
Wow. These words were a gut-punch for me – in the best possible sense. As much as we all fill our daily lives searching for fulfillment (through our jobs, our children, our bodies, our achievements, our to-do lists) the reality is that what gives us the most authentic form of peace is helping others. Its community. No matter where we look or how hard we try, there is simply no replacement for human connection.
And that is our hope for Bloom. That this will be a space, literally and figuratively, for each of us to reconnect. To rediscover our innate potential for creating change. To join together in community to pursue something bigger than ourselves. To look around and see whom we can serve. Together.
