What we CAN do

A photo my wonderful Mum took on the dock in Obhan, Scotland on our last day there. A most magical town, highly recommend.

A reflection on enoughness, creativity, and learning to honor what we already hold.

Lately, as I build out The Listener’s Lodge—a home for slow art and shared wonder—I’ve been thinking about what it really means to offer what we have, rather than mourn what we lack.

My harp teacher—the world-renowned jazz and alternative harpist, composer, and musical playwright Deborah Hensen-Conant—said something today that resonated deeply:

“Consider what you can do.
We are programmed to think, for some reason, that what we can do isn’t good somehow.
So do what you can do—and see how it works.”

For so many reasons I’m still uncovering, I’ve fallen especially hard into this hole of “it’s not enough.”
Or really—I’m not enough.
If I can do it, it must not be enough.

How cruel and dismissive of all the wonderful things I can do.
Like an overbearing parent who only points out the flaws in an art project,
or greets an A with “why not A+?”

And more importantly—what a disservice to the world, to throw away such precious gifts.
Gifts that could be shared with others who do not have them.

✨ So here’s what I can do.

Here are the gifts I’ve been given to share—with you, with me, with this wild and beautiful world:

• My voice, both soft and strong

• My ability to channel something deeper—something within and unseen

• My way with words and love of reading

• My ability to listen and perceive what is overlooked or underheard

• My capacity for patience

• My ability to see and point out the gifts and strengths of others

• My love of young people and the effortless connection I share with them

• My capacity for intense love, joy, and wonder

• My resilience in the face of immense suffering and torment

• My drive to follow truth and live with rigorous honesty and dignity

• My strength in recovering from addiction

• My dedication to practice—seeing life itself as practice

• My lifelong fascination with death and impermanence, which grants me perspective for all of the above

• My ability to think on my feet and feel on the fly

• My ability to dream, to see, to hear, to have one foot in another plane

• My craftiness—my love of visual art and creating beauty in every corner of life

• My propensity for slowness and solitude

• My love of connection and community

• My ability to stay grounded amidst deep uncertainty and chaos

• My steadfast and unwavering devotion to love and compassion

As we continue further into this journey together—this unfolding, exciting construction project of building out The Listener’s Lodge—I look forward to finding ways I can share what I can do with you,
and hearing what you can do, too.

Only love,
Eli