Life is already hard enough.
It does not need you to harden yourself as a symbol of your devout allegiance.
Nor is it a show of strength to abandon the tender parts of you as you muddle your way through.
Humbling away your sweet plans for one day things that drip through daydreams like warm honey doesn't make you more deserving of them.
Just as speaking them aloud doesn't render them any more vulnerable to the fiery lick of doubt that threatens to snatch them away before they have even come to be.
Put down your white flag,
Dear one.
Exhale the stale air from the cavern of your belly full and deep.
You need not proclaim your surrender to life.
After all,
There is no divine deal to be made with her.
Feel your bony grip loosen its desperate clench from the sinews of her throat.
Steady your gaze into this moment and trust your lungs to hold more than just a trickle of the life force she is ready and willing to pour into you.
If only for a moment or two,
Soften your wantings,
Your becomings,
And all your master plannings.
Feel the future that tugs ceaselessly at your ribs also release.
Exhaling with you,
And open yourself to the silky weaving of life through your senses.
She is orchestrating a symphony of thousands of experiences every day just for you,
Each a note to be savored in their rise and released with their fall,
None meant to hold us suspended in one single everlasting vibrational frequency.
You are but the sheet of music the notes are inked upon,
My love.
Life alone is the strings.
She is the woodwinds,
The brass,
And the percussion,
Conducting herself with unyielding ferocity.
She needs no help overtaking you with her mighty crescendos,
Nor is she even powerful enough to deny the space that exists between each note played.
Look closely,
Little one.
There is always pause to be found.
Nearly imperceptible at first,
But they're all the same,
Nestled between each subtle end and new beginning.
Reach out now and touch one.
Notice the steady rhythm of your breath rolling in and out of your belly like waves.
Feel for the delicate pause where one breath ends and another is born,
Where one wave reaches for the furthest grain of sand in one delicious morning stretch before folding back into itself and beginning again.
And again,
And again.
It's this feeling we ceaselessly crave,
A solemn lull where stillness comes easily without defense or guilt,
Where forward movement hangs like a raindrop on the tip of a leaf readying itself for what is to become of it,
Where we think,
If we can just get one good breath here,
If life can once again feel easy even just for a moment,
That would be enough for us to be with all the rest of it.
And so we harden,
We brace,
We run full speed toward the big,
Wide,
Open meadows of space available only when we have completed everything on our list,
When we have given everything of ourselves.
And we collapse,
Breathless and beaten into a thicket of wildflowers,
Hiding from life and crushing petals between our fingers as we tighten our hold,
Trying desperately to evaporate into the nothingness where nobody needs us and there is nowhere to be.
We endure.
We toss wishes into the blackness of what is to come and wait for the rumblings of our desires to split the sky of our being in two with an electric thunderclap.
But in a world where everyone is making the same wish upon the same star,
Perhaps it's time to stop waiting for a wish granted.
Perhaps it's time to stop running toward the salvation of a meadow.
Perhaps,
Even if just for a moment or two,
It's time for us to stop begging for scraps that feel softer,
Easier,
Quieter.
For just as with the breath,
There exists on the crest of every moment an invitation to soften that is always available for the taking.
And so in a world where making it is the agreed upon gold prize for a life lived well,
Perhaps yours could be making it soft,
Not by simply stumbling into the obviously soft spaces that are offered up in unsatisfying drips,
But by being softer with yourself amidst all of it,
Soft in the kind of way that needs you to choose it,
Especially when its voice is easily overpowered and lost,
Like a single flute fighting to be heard among the orchestra of your experience.
When you feel like a shadow of yourself,
Rushing through the day,
Stretching out into the pause that comes at the end as a reward for making it through,
Choose to make it soft instead.
Stand where you are and slow your racing heart.
Empty your lungs with an audible sigh.
And remember,
This moment is just as precious as the next when we choose to see the tender impermanence of it.
There exists a pause right here and now,
A subtle,
Imperceptible,
Unadorned space between this moment and the next right there for the taking.
When you feel the weight of 1,
000 burdens upon your shoulders,
Your spine stiffening as you ready yourself for the battle of the day ahead,
Choose to make it soft instead.
Feel for how the absence of efforting to keep it all together does not create the falling apart you fear.
If only for a moment or two,
Allow timelines and expectations to peel away from you like old paint.
Let the rush of the day fall to the floor in one beautiful,
Full-body shiver.
Allow it all to simply exist there without requiring your contribution,
Non-threateningly floating in your periphery and weaponized only in the moment you decide to judge yourself for the backlog of it.
And when you feel yourself digging your own rat and pushing yourself off the cliff into it,
Feel for the pillowy hand there ready to catch you.
Feel for the billows of peace that blanket your experience like fine powder as you land,
Reminding you that there is nothing wrong with boring except for your judgment of it as anything less than the stillness you asked for and that you can always choose to make it soft instead.
Close your eyes now and feel for the silent melody of your heart strumming a symphony all its own.
Allow yourself to drop without hesitation into this very moment and breathe in its sweetness,
Filling you from the base of your being and out through the very crown of your consciousness.
Feel for how eagerly your cells awake,
Drinking in the moment without needing it to last forever.
Feel for how effortless it is to trust in another heartbeat,
Another breath,
Another moment just like this one.
How fortunate you are to have available such a boundless supply.
Wrap your arms around this moment and cradle it with tenderness and gratitude.
In a world that means to harden you,
Dear one,
Choose to make yourself soft to it instead.
