Earlier this month in sadhana, my opening share was a question—an invitation to reflect. Even as the words were tumbling out of my mouth, it felt important: how are you meeting the moment?

I want to begin by saying clearly and emphatically that any amount of fury, outrage, despair, or grief that you are experiencing should not be ignored or repressed. Those feelings are not bad or wrong, and it does not make you weak or over sensitive if that’s what is present in your inner landscape. In fact, it makes you very fully human. Whatever you find when you turn inward, I urge you to make space to feel it fully. Where does it live in your body? How can you care for yourself as waves of rage, fear, or sadness move through you? Can you expand to include a wider range in this exquisite and impossible experience of being human?

This is our starting point. But it cannot be our end point.

Because next comes the question of how you choose to respond to life in real time. Meeting the moment from a place of anger, fear, or hopelessness isn’t furthering your own growth, and it isn’t helping anyone. You know that I believe we are either part of the problem or part of the solution. How are you meeting the moment is just another way of asking this. How are you participating? What are you contributing?

I have amazing and inspiring people in my life who are truly front line activists—and I am humbled by them. I also notice some shame that this level of activism is not something I have found in myself in an authentic way. And yet, it’s essential to remember that how each of us meets the moment is how we are contributing. Not only to the collective energy, but to the people around us, to the process of our own lives, and to how we learn to live with the contents of our minds.

How you meet the moment is a choice.

So let me reiterate: it is necessary to feel the difficult and uncomfortable emotions as they arise and to make space for the parts of yourself that are disappointed or frightened. And we must also continue to choose. Choosing joy in small moments or large ones, choosing love—for the closest people in your life and for those you cannot understand. We must choose to meet the moment with hope that there are possibilities we have not yet even considered—possibilities we will never find if we collapse into anger or despair. We cannot wisely clear a path forward if we have not confronted the shadowy parts of our own psyches. Meeting the challenges of this time from a place of scarcity, fear, or hopelessness does not blaze a sovereign path.

At the very least, this requires some courage. At the best, fearlessness. That’s what I’m working toward.

There is something in both asking the question and searching for the answer—how we choose to meet the moment—that shapes us. It shapes our world. Because what do we see in the world, if not a projection of what is in our own minds? It’s the old question of which wolf you are feeding. Is it fear or courage? Hate or hope? So how are you engaging with this shared moment? How are you caring for yourself and the people around you? Are you choosing wisely how you spend your time—and with whom? How much news are you ingesting? How much doom scrolling are you allowing into your day? 

There are so many things we do not get to choose. So many places where we have no real power or control. And so I’m asking you this: can you release what is not yours to carry, greet what is inside you with compassion, curiosity, and non-judgment, and then turn toward the world with grace—or love, or hope, or joy, or strength, or encouragement?

Here is my invitation.

Create space. Acknowledge what is present inside you as you move through your days. Feel it fully—and know that it is not the whole truth. You also have access to an endless reserve of goodness, peace, and perseverance. You must also dip into that well. When you do, you will meet the moment differently. And one moment at a time, that is how a whole new path forward is carved. Together.