Here’s a thought. Let’s all be grown-ups, the best and brightest kind. Beaten by circumstance and beleaguered by time, we ask pretty much every day how that is possible. Some days hold more success than others. Or is it all success?
To be a grown-up (of the best and brightest kind) you must first perform the miracle of loving yourself. This is rarely easy. It gets to the trembly, unsure deeps of you which would rather be undiscovered. Unexposed. Truly, you can try on thousands of pairs of low-rise jeans or start a few dozen non-profit organizations to lift up the world, mark out your romantic boundaries with a giant red Sharpie, or give your kids every gizmo known to marketingkind. Nothing, none of this contributes one iota to self-love. Praying to god misses the point, too. Divine beings and stylin’ clothes and handsome giving paw at the hope of love, but really, genuinely, you need to have a quiet talk with you.
It could take years.
Activity masks uncertainty. And you can mask-up your entire life. (I've tried, and been so puzzled at the ratty outcomes.) You can die as uninformed as you came into the world. More uninformed! Because you’ve swallowed the ignorance of what’s supposedly important and chased its tail like a rescue dog on adoption day. A busy dog (expecting no answer) might ask, What else is there?
Basic to you, at the core of you, and you can find it, is a pool of open being. You get to draw from this pool any time, everywhere. Yes, you may have specifically curly hair or a limp in your walk or a constant tendency to lose your glasses—and you also have a limitless foundation of untrammeled good.
How you contact that good and draw it up with pleasure like fresh well water every day is a powerful question. It can transform your sense of self and deliver you to joy. The more you let the well water refresh you, even for seconds in a day, the calmer your tempests of avoidance/grasping/hate become. Your sense of self will gentle and grow wide and welcoming. You are good and can know it.
You cannot avoid death, ill health, loss of friends. You can avoid being and loving yourself. Please don’t. Be an adult. The best and brightest kind. Which has nothing to do with appearances and everything to do with accepting your beautiful place here as you.
Once you love yourself, limitations which seem to keep you cut off from life’s bounty will frustrate you far less. You won’t be hoodwinked by their glossy offers. You will know you are great and thus have to prove it to no one. You can relax.
Good things, great things, interconnected things will rally round you. Even if they appear to be failures. Every failure is a step on the path to success.
And you know what? Love attracts love.
To be a grown-up (of the best and brightest kind) you must first perform the miracle of loving yourself. This is rarely easy. It gets to the trembly, unsure deeps of you which would rather be undiscovered. Unexposed. Truly, you can try on thousands of pairs of low-rise jeans or start a few dozen non-profit organizations to lift up the world, mark out your romantic boundaries with a giant red Sharpie, or give your kids every gizmo known to marketingkind. Nothing, none of this contributes one iota to self-love. Praying to god misses the point, too. Divine beings and stylin’ clothes and handsome giving paw at the hope of love, but really, genuinely, you need to have a quiet talk with you.
It could take years.
Activity masks uncertainty. And you can mask-up your entire life. (I've tried, and been so puzzled at the ratty outcomes.) You can die as uninformed as you came into the world. More uninformed! Because you’ve swallowed the ignorance of what’s supposedly important and chased its tail like a rescue dog on adoption day. A busy dog (expecting no answer) might ask, What else is there?
Basic to you, at the core of you, and you can find it, is a pool of open being. You get to draw from this pool any time, everywhere. Yes, you may have specifically curly hair or a limp in your walk or a constant tendency to lose your glasses—and you also have a limitless foundation of untrammeled good.
How you contact that good and draw it up with pleasure like fresh well water every day is a powerful question. It can transform your sense of self and deliver you to joy. The more you let the well water refresh you, even for seconds in a day, the calmer your tempests of avoidance/grasping/hate become. Your sense of self will gentle and grow wide and welcoming. You are good and can know it.
You cannot avoid death, ill health, loss of friends. You can avoid being and loving yourself. Please don’t. Be an adult. The best and brightest kind. Which has nothing to do with appearances and everything to do with accepting your beautiful place here as you.
Once you love yourself, limitations which seem to keep you cut off from life’s bounty will frustrate you far less. You won’t be hoodwinked by their glossy offers. You will know you are great and thus have to prove it to no one. You can relax.
Good things, great things, interconnected things will rally round you. Even if they appear to be failures. Every failure is a step on the path to success.
And you know what? Love attracts love.
