cthewind's Blog

Not every “yes” is good, nor every “no” bad.

What is true is that both of these words transmit power to shape the world.

No has important work to do to interrupt injustice, to end oppression, to prevent exploitation.

Sometimes no sets a boundary in the wrong place—as though the world can go on without a yes. No-saying forces are all around us, announcing intentions to annihilate in war, feud continuously in politics, hold at a distance those at work and home, disregard the planet.

A kind of yes is required to tend a plant or offer help—to smile, even, or simply to go on with the day.

Yes gets us into trouble sometimes—overworking, overpromising, overconsuming—outstripping all capacities to follow through, forgetting there are boundaries at all. Too many times in trouble—feeling weak or discouraged or foolish or not human at all—we lose faith in yes, believe no will be much safer, adopt it as default navigation in this too-much world.

We can convince ourselves life is possible without the risk of yes, that saying no protects us from harm, removes suffering, invents another world.

But it is yes that creates the world, calls it into being, leaps at the chance to nurture life. Yes, the little word bearing so much potential, is risky every time, for those practiced in it and those saying it as though for the first time.

Every yes opens us to world that may hurt us. But our noes are killing us.

Each new rotation of the planet is a kind of yes—moving imperceptibly without your power or attention, ready for you to join if you can, if you will. Sometimes yesses are easy, joyful, received with great fanfare. Other times yesses are meager, tentative, offered with all the strength we can muster in the face of resistance or suffering or indifference.

How will you tend the world with yes, stretching your attention to this day?