POST-IT NOTE WISDOM
What three little pastel squares reminded me about connection, spirit, and loving the world as it is.
Back when I worked in an insurance office, I was dubbed The Queen of Post-it Notes. My desk looked like a pastel command center with little squares reminding me to call a customer, follow up on a policy, or return a call by the end of the day.
These days not much has changed except the scenery. I traded the office chair for a sturdy old vintage seat with a herringbone weave and three coats of paint. The notes are still everywhere. But now they hold different things. Instead of reminders about paperwork, they catch fragments of thought. A sentence from a podcast. A line from something I read. A phrase someone said that landed with enough weight to make me stop and write it down before it drifted away.
Over the past couple of months a small stack has been gathering beside me. This morning as I was cleaning my desk, I took a longer pause at each one before placing them in the front of my journal. I kept three, at random out. I don’t know what podcast, book, article, conversation they came from to site a direct source, but here they are… AND I’m not entirely sure if they are connected in any way, but they seemed to speak to each other in a way I hope I can explain effectively.
1. We are all rivers converging.
The truth of this one kind of stops me in my tracks.
Every life carries its own current. Memories, experiences, heartbreaks, joys and lessons gathered along the way. Each of us moving forward through out days in channels carved by where we’ve been and what we have lived through. From where we stand, it can feel like we are traveling alone.
But rivers rarely stay separate for long. They merge. They cross. They feed into one another in ways that are easy to miss when you are standing too close to the banks.
Our lives brush against each other constantly, exchanging small pieces of understanding as we go. Seen from above, it begins to look less like separation and more like a vast watershed. Currents meeting. Dividing. Meeting again. And sometimes, right at those intersections, something meaningful slips through.
2. Spirit can send perfect messages through imperfect vessels.
This one quietly removes the expectation that wisdom should only arrive through polished voices or perfect teachers. Sometimes the message that stays with you for years comes from someone who didn’t even realize they were delivering it.
A teacher who gave you words of encouragement. A friend who says something simple that lands exactly when you needed to hear it. A stranger whose passing comment lingers long after the conversation ends. A sentence overheard while standing in line at the grocery store. A casual remark from someone who is just thinking out loud. A podcast you half-listen to while you work to meet a deadline. Even from someone you don’t particularly agree with.
Truth has a curious way of traveling through ordinary people in ordinary ways. Or vice versa. Through unordinary people in unordinary ways.
Maybe that’s because if we really are all rivers converging, then wisdom itself move through those crossings. It doesn’t belong to one person. It flows between us, carried along the currents of conversation, experience, and shared humanity.
None of us are perfect vessels. But somehow the message still gets through. And maybe that’s part of the beauty of it.
3. Appreciate and love everything.
At first glance, this sounds like one of those lofty ideas that feels nearly impossible to live up to. Loving everything is a tall order when the world is complicated and people—ourselves included—can be messy.
But I don’t think this is asking us to approve of everything. I think it’s inviting us to notice. To appreciate the strange, beautiful fact that life is always unfolding around us. The small details that often slip past unnoticed. The way the sunlight stretches across the kitchen floor in the morning. The way a single sentence can shift the direction of your thoughts for the rest of the day. Appreciation can soften us. It opens our eyes to the possibility that meaning is constantly passing by. And sometimes it’s those small moments that leave the biggest impression.
But the note doesn’t stop at appreciation. It says love. And that word asks something deeper of us. Love, in this sense, isn’t the tidy agreeable version we often thing about. It’s not reserved for the people who behave the way we wish they would, or the moments that make life easy. It’s closer to the kind of love that refuses to withdraw itself.
I’m often reminded that God is not a respecter of persons. That divine love doesn’t sort humanity into categories of worthy and unworthy. It meets people exactly where they are. Not once they figure things out. Not once they become better or wiser or easier to understand and/or deal with. But right where they are.
That kind of love doesn’t mean excusing harm or pretending everything is fine. But, it does mean recognizing that every person we meet is carrying their own currents – fears, hopes, wounds, longings we know nothing about.
One of my new subscribers reminded me that this kind of love is the kind that moves mountains. Not because it is loud or forceful, but because it quietly refuses to close the door on anyone. It keeps the current open.
Maybe this is where all three of these little Post-it notes meet.
We are all rivers converging. Messages between us in ways we don’t recognize. And when we begin to see life that way, appreciation becomes easier. Love becomes possible.
Which might be why I keep writing these “reminders” down on little pastel squares of paper.
Did any of this resonate with you? I’d like to hear how you feel about this kind of love, the one that allows our currents to converge in meaningful ways. What are some of your POST-IT NOTES - your daily reminders that let you know just how wonderful you truly are?
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