Sovereignty:
Sovereignty... is the quality of owning your space so completely and fully that you can’t be shaken from being you.
You get to be the (pirate-ey or not) queen — or king — of your own fabulous kingdom. Or queendom. Or whatever.
In other words:
Your body. Your energy. Your physical space. Your emotional space. Your work. Your practice. Whatever else belongs to you. It’s all yours.
You own it. You feel comfortable in it. You inhabit what is yours and you belong there fully and completely.
It’s feeling so safe being yourself that other people’s stuff is obviously just that.
It means having the patience to interact with your own stuff with love, knowing that it’s constantly changing anyway.
And your experience of sovereignty doesn’t step on anyone else’s. It’s something that everyone gets to experience for himself or herself. --Havi
Lovely, right? ... Except it's a bit of a mouthful and I haven't quite internalized it all so that the word sovereignty alone pulls the whole idea into focus. It is after all someone else's word.
So in early December, I started pondering what sovereignty is in my vernacular. Stand Your Ground came to mind almost immediately, but I resisted it. I'm still resisting it. There's too much stubbornness in that phrase, and I've already got plenty of that. I needed something different. I became obsessed with the idea that I needed to rewatch my go-to theme source: David Lynch's Dune, and yet, I never got around to it.
By the beginning of January, I figured if it wasn't a quote I already knew then it probably wouldn't make a good theme for me anyway. A few days ago, it came to me. I popped in my Dune DVD and double-checked the bit that had come to mind, in which Stilgar gives Paul his Fremen name:
You have strength. You shall be known as Usul, which is the strength of the base of the pillar.How I love the voice of the actor who plays Stilgar and his blue within blue eyes, a handsome messenger indeed.
2010: You Shall Be Known As Usul.
The strength of the base of the pillar conveys the unshakable sense of self that I was looking for, and also grace, confidence, integrity, good posture, and physical strength, and likely much else I've yet to discern.
I think You Shall Be Known As Usul is going to help me kick some ass this year.
What's your theme, goal, or intention for 2010?
4 years ago on TTaT: twinge
DOES THIS MEAN YOU'RE COMING TO TEQUILACON IN VANCOUVER?!??
ReplyDeleteSo many people who would be thrilled to meet you... not the least of which being... ME!! :-)
Dune FTW!
ReplyDeleteAnd I second what Dave said. You shall be known as Usul among our troop of bloggers...and I hope that in Vancouver you will tell me of the waters of your homeworld.
Your encouragement is truly appreciated. I'm not sure you guys realize what a difference it makes.
ReplyDeleteI did finally take a gander at some flights. Uf. 1/4 of which is for how long it takes to get there from here. Times like this living in a city with a hub airport sounds pretty sweet. Any suggestions for best sites to search for airfares on? The webscape has changed quite a bit since I last flew.
No promises, but I do have it in mind.
Iron Fist:
\m/ DUNE \m/
Check on kayak.com, it's a good aggregator for a lot of different airlines. You can save a bit by flying into Sea-Tac (or even Bellingham) and taking the Amtrak into Vancouver.
ReplyDeletePlease do think about it, Claire.
Thanks for the tips! I haven't tried kayak.com before. And I will check out the Sea-Tac approach. I wondered about looking into something like that.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I could spend a day in Seattle to break up the travel a bit.
I'm definitely looking to see how I could make it work. Fingers crossed.
Any idea when the TQCon venue will be decided/announced? Trying to keep ground logistics in mind as well.
We are in the process of selecting one now. All the finalists tend to be clustered around the downtown area near Granville Island. And a day in Seattle sounds delightful. Given the number of awesome bloggers who live there and the number of people travelling through that city on their way to Vancouver there will probably be unofficial meet ups there in the days before.
ReplyDeleteEven if you don't go for that, Seattle is a lovely city to spend a day in. You could do far worse.
I've actually been to Seattle before, though a long time ago. Even Bellingham for that matter as well as Vancouver, though the latter just in passing on the way to Victoria Island.
ReplyDeleteMuch cheaper to fly to Seattle, so that was a good tip.
Thanks for the venue update. I'll keep crunching the numbers.
Joy.
ReplyDeleteBut I love that you took Sovereignity and turned it into a phrase that worked for you - and one from Dune, no less.
Dune is where it's at. :)
ReplyDelete