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

dad

he was the weathered sea captain who knew. he knew the quickest way to tie down a sail when a storm came up out of nowhere. he instinctively knew the best angle to guide the ship versus the waves. he knew the way the deck smelled after a rain - the way the sunlight breaking through the clouds near the horizon made your soul rest at ease. he knew because he'd done it. he'd sailed these very seas. he knew that the storm would pass because he had ridden it out himself.

and he knew the only way a person could know those things was by
taking a deep breath,
watching it come, and
fighting through, then
watching it pass.

"and in times of trouble
i could turn to my [father]
and i knew that would understand,
so at age 18 i cried to my [father]
and he told me young man,
there are moments when you fall to the ground,
but you are stronger than you feel you are now,
you don't always have to speak so loud,
just be as you are.
life is not always a comfortable ride,
everybody has scars that they hide,
everybody plays the fool sometimes,
just be as you are."       -(adapted from) be as you are - mike posner

 i miss you so

Human

"For to be human is to be incomplete, yet yearn for completion; it is to be uncertain yet long for certainty; to be imperfect yet long for perfection; to be broken yet crave wholeness."

"The metal of these wrenches is so cold it hurts the hands. But it's a good hurt. It's real, not imaginary, and it's here, absolutely, in my hand,"
-Robert Pirsig 'zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance'