WISDOM & KINDNESS

THREE GENTLE REMINDERS

I. The truth is genuine connection is ease. It is peace. When you find it, you will know. You will feel seen. You will feel respected. The human beings surrounding you in this life should not exhaust you, hollow you out, or leave you feeling hard to love. It would help if you did not have to play games or beg for someone to care for you the way you have deeply shown up to care for them. Please, do not romanticize the things in this life that hurt. You cannot love someone into loving you, being ready, or meeting their potential; you cannot close their hands around your heart if they are unwilling to hold it themselves. You have to let them go. You have to focus on the people who bring you back home to yourself. It will help if you concentrate on standing up for that connection here because it exists. It exists. Trust that it will find you.

II. It is often in your weakest moments that you have the opportunity to be the strongest. However, this does not mean putting on a brave face and pretending that the heaviness does not exist. Instead, this means sitting with your feelings and experiencing them as they are, letting them wash over you like rain. This means choosing to confront the voids instead of filling them or numbing them, or distracting yourself from the fact that they exist. In an age of extreme stimulation, where we can sweep our pain under the rug and focus on everything outside of ourselves that is readily available and seeking our attention, it takes a lot of courage to face what hurts. To look it in the eyes, to give it a name, to understand that you cannot outrun yourself forever. That is what makes it an act of strength. That is where the healing begins.

III. Stay open to this world. Stay available to this world because it is filled with human beings, experiences, and feelings that will profoundly and beautifully grow you and inspire you and remind you that there is so much out there just waiting to be discovered. All it takes is one chance encounter, one singular moment in time, to completely change your life -to expand the way you see happiness and hope, to crack your heart open, to introduce it to levels of feeling and caring that you never knew existed. Yes, it is risky to be vulnerable, to be unguarded in this life; but it is far more challenging to stay close to all of the possibilities within it, to remain fortified and safe and tucked away from feeling. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to connect. Please don’t ever forget that.