Almost Okay
On Self-Love, Self-Knowledge, and the Quiet Practice of Returning
We are finite, in the face of the infinite. And still, we choose love.
-Krista Tippett
In a world unraveling at its edges — ecological collapse, social fray, existential fatigue, wars — the ancient command to know thyself takes on a different urgency.
We are not just seekers of knowledge. We are carriers of confusion. And yet, in this haze, love still offers a lamp.
Self-love, here, is not indulgent. It is infrastructural. It is not the cherry atop a self-improvement sundae; it is my soil. A quiet, steady practice that keeps me human when the world feels otherwise.
For me, this practice has meant learning to hold dialogue with myself. I write to myself. I leave voice notes: some playful, others grieving, a few wise, a few utterly lost. They are dispatches from a self in motion to a self in stillness. A journal not of time alone, but of tone.
It was not indulgence that led me here. It was inquiry, Socratic in spirit. He believed an unexamined life wasn’t worth living. But what he sought wasn’t data on the self; it was relationship with the self.
Annie Dillard one of my favourite authors, in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, reminds me that to observe deeply is itself an act of devotion. I find this in my own observations: of myself, of squirrels, of rivers, of how I respond when something breaks. Perhaps it was through conscious pausing, through observation, that I found a way back to myself. The pause became a mirror for the soul.
I am far from perfect. But in attending to myself with love, I’ve begun to forgive faster, act with more grace, and soften my judgments. Dōgen, the Zen master, wrote: To study the self is to forget the self. And in forgetting, just for a moment, we become vast.
Still, between all the versions of self I experience — the grieving, the joyous, the doubting, there is something unchanging. A core that remains within me. A flame that flickers in solitude. For me, it is the return to love. Love for the self, for those I care about, for the world that keeps turning no matter what.
I did not come to this easily. I have lived through my share of traumas and darkness. And yet, what has endured in me, what I have come to trust, is this: love is not a performance. It is the practice of including myself in the whole. Not narcissistically. Not through navel-gazing. But through tenderness. Through witnessing.
I often joke that I must be God’s favorite child when it comes to inner discoveries, because just when I need it, grace arrives like a note tucked into the wind.
There’s a shift toward quietude. A pull to speak only when something rises from within. I ask myself often how I want to inhabit vulnerability in this age. I know now that I don’t want to become too dense about myself. I want to write about how we make space for vulnerability and sharing in one of the next posts especially in this era. I have a lot of thoughts on this.
I remind myself to share a small part of what I write. I remember the stranger on a flight who once asked me, “What do you want to do before you die?”
I had no answer then. That was a year ago.
Today, I might. I want to embody love, lightly.
To honour the gift of life.
To let go of the ego, especially when it matters most.
She told me something regarding sharing. She encouraged me to share more as there may be one person who could find something worthwhile it. So here I am trying to share whenever I feel compelled from within.
There are gifts in aging. I think I’m the gooey kind, as Alan Watts might say.
Nature as a Philosopher
When language slips, I walk. Nature doesn’t explain. It embodies. The tree does not hoard its fruit. The river does not lament the rock. There is rhythm in the non-human world that teaches us to yield, not to retreat but to adapt. If you look into my phone, you will find snippets of my awe that is consistent :)
Lao Tzu said that knowing the self begins with observing nature. I believe it with all my being. I watch how squirrels and trees hold space for one another. I marvel that the world runs quietly and elegantly when not bound by ego.
This is where self-love emerges as a spiritual lens. Not religious necessarily, but sacred. To participate in life, as one is: imperfect, earnest, aware.
Inner Narratives and the Alter Ego
I grew up in a family of socialists. Humility was a default feature — sometimes a virtue, sometimes a silence. Pride was trimmed down to size. Emotions folded, tucked, set aside to make room for the others always.
Now, I am learning to speak with Sarita, which was my middle name that I chose to drop. I have reclaimed the name as a voice of inner companionship. She is a guide nudging me to do more and doubt less. With great courage, I created a tiny speck of my being with a web home.
She says what wasn’t said then.
You matter.
You’re allowed to feel.
You’re allowed to speak and share your gifts with the world.
Bell hooks reminds me: Love is the will to nurture growth. That includes our own. Practicing self-love is not about being loud. It’s about being real. It is not a mask. It’s a deeper skin.
Humour and Imperfection
Not all of it is solemn. Some Sundays, I draw Almost Okay, a comic about the small messes of being alive. It reminds me that wisdom doesn’t always arrive in robes. Sometimes it shows up in socks, off-balance, laughing.
I have always loved comics. My comic drawing is imperfect yet it is slowly starting to find a life of its own. I must give the credit to my husband for this part of me. I can joke as much as him. He is one of the most jovial humans and our home is never short of laughter.
Humour is one of those bridges. It lets me carry the weight without hardening. Last week’s version :)
The Spiritual Lens and the Question of Fit
Some days, I wonder:
Am I too much?
Or do I simply not fit into the grooves the world has worn in?
These are quiet inner quarrels — soft, but persistent. In such moments, spiritual inquiry becomes refuge. Not answers, but mirrors.
The Advaitic question: Who am I?
The Buddhist gaze: Can I sit with this?
Even a single deep breath can become a prayer. To love the self gently is to cradle our inner misfits. Not to fix, but to understand them.
Looking within is not escapism.It is how we preserve our energy to show up where it matters: In the microsystems we touch, The people we nurture, The worlds we build quietly.
Time and again, in moments of confusion or doubt, I’ve stumbled upon John O’Donohue — in books, in quotes, in chance algorithms. To find our own kind of spiritual nourishment can be a reservoir of strength. I continue to find different lakes of spiritual anchor through different doors. Be it music, art, meditating, connecting with my form of Divine, it nudges to the road of faith.
As if the universe is conspiring to whisper:
Be patient. This too is part of the becoming.
We find what we are ready to receive.
A Woman Becoming
In my mid-40s, I’ve begun to see the body as a portal.
Not just a vessel of endurance, but a compass pointing toward restoration. After years of showing up for family, of holding space for others, I now see how easily women abandon their own needs — quietly, dutifully, sometimes even proudly.
There is a vast, unspoken shift women move through. Not just hormonal. Emotional. Spiritual.
The weariness that knocks at odd hours. The new pace the body demands. The scares that show up now and then. The sharp clarity that replaces people-pleasing. A profound awareness of the finitude of life not out of fear but gratitude.
This shift is sacred. It is a summons to preserve energy.
To protect inner resources.
To know that care is not always about others.
Sometimes, it begins with reclaiming yourself.
Self-love here is not spa-day luxury.
It is a recalibration.
A choosing.
A return.
Return and Resilience
Life’s challenges are the ocean.
And joy is a brook that keep flowing towards the ocean.
A brook that is slow yet ever present.
I don’t try to reach them by force.
I dock.
I breathe.
I begin again.
I think of the movie, Arrival. It reminds me love is chosen even with the knowledge of loss. It’s not naïve. It’s transcendent.
This is the strength of love as anchor. Not because it removes the storm, but because it steadies my vessel for this lifetime.
Tending to Altars
To love oneself is to prepare a space:
A personal altar.
A sacred pause.
I am not escaping the world.
I am re-entering it, lit from within.
Self-love is not a mirror.
It is my lens.
Not an ending.
A way.
A thread that weaves space for others
Because I have made space for myself.
Return, again and again, to this intricate thread of life.
The poem that I chose for today is :
Let Evening Come by Jane Kenyon
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.I leave you with these reflections :
What is your return?
Where is your altar?
What keeps you almost okay?
Thank you to my better half K for help with reading and editing this draft and welcome to my childhood friend who finally joined Substack. I am tagging her so that she gets to share her passionate views and thoughts with the world :D
writing to oneself is the most amazing thing!