rafiki

"look harder..."
"you see, he lives in you"

at once i felt a comfort and an ache.

i was on the elliptical in the gym minding my own thoughts, when something made me smile - a genuine smile. the kind you feel on your face and in your guts.

just then i caught my own glance in the mirror across the room and my heart stuttered a little bit. because for a split second, i saw my dad. smiling back at me. through the bearded mouth and the smile that kind of turns down. through the eyes that were bright and deep.

an idea(l)

i've come to... an idea.
and that is that love is truly the most important gift we're given in life. it is the highest form of human experience - the most important thing in life. maybe it's even the much debated "point."

but love is kind of like perfection.
we can experience moments. glimpses. and we're driven to pursue it, but as long as we're alive and human, it's an impossible goal.
this is so because

love is the absence of selfishness.

and as long as we are human, we are, in our deepest layers, selfish. it's in our nature to be self-centered. in this way, it's much like trying to be perfect, and sometimes feels like climbing a greased pole. maybe this is why love feels so elusive - why many of us become jaded and turn our backs on the pursuit. when we try and "fail" and are tempted to believe that our failure indicates something about love itself rather than about our own humanness. perhaps this is the reason it seems so fleeting. indeed, impossible.

but it's far from futile. maybe if love itself is the highest form of human experience, then the pursuit of love is the most noble of all human endeavors.

"love is for the fighter,
born to lose but never quit.
swinging for the moon in the water." - dawes

rain / breathe

when you live down here,
you learn something about tenacity.
day after day you press through the searing
when your eyes burn and blur
and your lungs feel like poison.

when frustration moves your soul
feels just out of reach when you need closeness
feels like no room to be, when space is what you need

but you keep living.
you keep straining to see the mountains

because one day it rains.
and just for a moment, you can breath
you can fill up your lungs
and it doesn't burn.

just the way you are

"I was neurotic for years. I was anxious and depressed and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change. I resented them, and I agreed with them, and I wanted to change, but simply couldn't, no matter how hard I tried.
 What hurt the most was that, like the others, my best friend kept insisting that I change. So I felt powerless and trapped. Then, one day, another friend said to me, 'don't change. I love you just as you are.' 
 Those words were music to my ears: 'Don't change. Don't change. Don't change... I love you just as you are.' I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly, I changed!"

- a story