Now that you are here,
Let go of what has passed.
Do not worry about what may come.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Welcome to a hit of hope,
And this one is salty.
Hey there.
You there.
You,
Living in a complicated world that can bring sweetness and pain,
Joy and sorrow,
Hope and despair.
Being alive is hard.
Some days we crush it.
We get it right.
We live our fullest,
Most authentic,
Most amazing and warm and kind and intelligent and witty lives.
We can feel it.
The universe is on our side,
Offering us all kinds of beautiful and incredible things.
Inhale.
Exhale.
God,
To stay in those moments,
Right?
To always be real and good and kind.
Wouldn't life be a hell of a lot easier if we could always be that way?
Inhale.
Exhale.
But try as we might.
The selves we don't like.
The selves who are wounded and weird.
The selves who are small and even snarling.
Why sometimes it's like those selves possess us,
Taking us over,
Having us act out in ways that leave us shaking our heads at ourselves or wanting to curl up in a closet in embarrassment and shame.
Why in the hell does that happen?
I have no fucking clue.
We could blame the moon,
Our parents,
Karma,
Being hangry,
Whatever.
It is true that just like water on a rock or a glacier on the earth,
Outside forces shape us.
And at the same time,
Sometimes blame is a way of turning the pain outward,
Giving it to an outside source,
An outside villain.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Because it can almost be unbearable to let the pain of being human sit inside of us.
Because being human is often hard and awkward and pain sucks.
Uncertainty sucks.
Screwing up really sucks.
As does not fitting in,
Not doing it right,
And we just want the noise inside to stop.
Inhale.
Exhale.
When I get to feeling this way,
The word that comes to mind is tender.
The good old Oxford English Dictionary shows us the wide variety of meanings there are for tender.
It can mean fragile,
Easily broken.
It's a sense of hurt where the slightest pressure can make us wince,
Curl in,
Want to protect.
There is also tender in the sense of being harmed by the conditions you are in,
Like the first green shoots of spring,
Not being able to withstand a frost or hard rain.
This kind of tender is related to tend.
In fraught and difficult conditions,
There has to be a careful nurturing if the living thing is to survive and thrive.
Did you hear that?
In fraught conditions,
In difficult conditions,
For something to survive and thrive,
There has to be a careful nurturing.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Yes,
Being alive is hard.
We can get it right.
We can get it so very wrong.
We can be beautiful and incredible.
We can be wounded and small.
When life is amazing,
We can welcome the good.
When life makes us tender,
When that pain of being human is almost unbearable,
We can choose to attack or numb or hide or get quiet and centered,
To go in,
To sit with.
Yes,
It hurts.
I know it hurts.
Sit with.
Name what hurts.
Listen to what hurts.
I'm not gonna lie,
Some shit is probably gonna come up.
Sit with.
Listen to what hurts.
Then tend.
Nurture.
Treat your tender spirit with care.
Being human is hard.
Sit.
Breathe.
Tend.
You are beautiful and incredible.
You are amazing and real.
You are the only you there is.
Life lives in you.
Light lives in you.
Live Light.
