Hello my friend,
Just a short note update. The full Weekly Calm will land in your inbox over Easter weekend as usual. But I wanted to say hello and share something that has been sitting with me since I got home.
I’ve had my operation, and I’m home, and it all went well. Thank you to every single person who sent a message or a thought or a prayer. I felt it. I really did.
Lying in a hospital bed is a great teacher if you let it be. You realise very quickly how many people it takes just to keep one person alive and comfortable. The surgeons, the nurses, the porters, the person who brings the tea, the engineers who keep the lights on, the farmers who grew the food on the tray. And beyond that, the people at home holding things together while you’re away.
We tell ourselves a story sometimes that we are independent. That we stand on our own two feet. And there is something beautiful in that spirit. But the deeper truth, the one that lands in your chest when you’re lying still long enough to notice, is that we never do any of this alone.
We are completely interdependent. On each other. On the systems around us, whether we built them or inherited them. On the food we eat and the earth that grew it. On the community we breathe in every single day. On the universe itself, which we are not just living in but are part of, simultaneously.
Satish Kumar, a former Jain monk who once walked from India to Moscow and then on to the capitals of the nuclear powers to deliver a message of peace, put it simply. He turned Descartes on his head. Instead of “I think, therefore I am,” he said, “You are, therefore I am.” That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
We exist because of each other. Not in spite of each other.
So this week, instead of a teaching or a practice or a reflective question, I just want to offer this. Look around you. Notice who and what is holding your life together right now. The seen and the unseen. And if gratitude rises, let it.
That’s all. That’s the whole newsletter this week.
Be gentle with yourself this week. You are part of something far bigger than you realise, and that something is also part of you.
Much love, Steven
If you would like to support, listen to the podcast, or just say hello: stevenwebb.uk