What Do You Know for Sure?

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”― Anne Lamott

In a Anne Lamott’s TEDTalk, she shares 12 things she knows for sure. Below are five to ponder as you consider your own list of things you know for sure. Beyond opinion. Deeper than assumption. Underlying foundations that don’t shift with the winds.

Each of us has pivotal insights and truths that resonate in our own life. If we have the right list, not rules and regulations, they serve to open us up, expand our view, deepen our compassion and prompt us to love fully without counting.

1. All truth is a paradox. Life is a precious unfathomably beautiful gift, and it is impossible here,” she says. Life is “filled with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart, all swirled together.”.
2. “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes. That includes you.”.
3. Nothing outside of you will help you in any real, lasting way. Radical self-care is the only thing that will get you through. It’s hard to admit, but it’s true, and it works the other way around too. “If it is someone else’s problem, you probably don’t have the solution,” she says.
4. “Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared. Everyone, even the people who seem to have it most together. So don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides,” she says.
5. Grace is a powerful thing. “Grace is Spiritual WD-40 or water wings. Laughter really is carbonated holiness.”

What do you really know for sure?