“Tell me about your silence.”

It’s a silence so big you could swim in it and blow up bubbles from the bottom of it.

A silence so big it’d swallow you whole.

A silence so big, if you listen hard enough,
you can hear it roar.

“Let’s talk about it another time.”*

*If I’m honest, sometimes I feel like we’ve been trying to find each other in every life before this one, and this is as close as we’ve ever gotten. And I know now that we have to try again because we fucked this up. Maybe we won’t even be born on the same continent next time, or the time after that, and we’ll just spend those lives searching for something we can’t find, miserable for reasons we will never understand. Until we get to try again. Until we somehow find each other in another life.

“What do I do?”

Be in the middle of every good thing.

Be in the middle of blue eyes, of green grass, of clear rain.

Be in the middle of red fire, be the good voice that asks for

peace and love.

I know:

Sometimes, you think you don’t

deserve goodness.

But, I promise you,

we all have things

we think we don’t deserve.

You deserve all the goodness you can get.

So:

Go find a pen

that only writes good things

about you,

go find the paper that hears it,

go find the person who loves you for who you are and wouldn’t change a single hair on your body, go find the God of good deeds in the tips of a flower’s petals,

go find the God of good conversation

at the edge of a tea mug,

go find yourself in the strange place

where all things live,
go find a way to be like dust in
light, suspended above the

carpet, go find a new way to be that doesn’t make you feel like you’re trying to be

anything at all. 

Take a moment, now, to be conscious of
what you’re doing with your time.

If you intend to waste it, that’s fine, 

just be aware that you’re wasting it. 

Do not confuse being in the same room, 

with spending good time with another

human being. 

Do not confuse the distractions of the world,
with the world itself. 

A silent bell is ringing.
Because every beautiful thing

is only Here when you are.

Please:

Do the hard work of being aware of the world around you, and what you think of it. 

Take charge of your mind. 

Silence your own critics but pay attention to harsh, good advice. 

And listen to the kindest voice in your head.

Listen.

Here is what else I know about sadness.

There is a special kind of sadness that can only be found in the confusion between who you think you are

and who you think other people want you to be.§

^§ “Keep away from me.”

“Just one more.”

Why do we hurt ourselves more, when other people hurt us? Why do we beat ourselves up, for feeling beat up?

Maybe the lesser pain you cause yourself distracts you from the bigger pain inside.

And it’s easy to get stuck in a kind of loop of pain.

You’re hurt, so you hurt yourself some more.

But the correct response to pain, is self-love.

When we’re hurt, we need to take better care of ourselves. Not worse.

It can be hard to be conscious in the moment and remember to be kind to ourselves when someone hurts us. But you need to try.

Please.

Try.

You are the person who asks who they are.

You are a wonderer.

A searcher.

You are the person who asks who they are.

It’s only the idea that everyone else KNOWS who they are that’s causing you pain.

But no one knows who they really are.

You are an overflowing river that shifts its banks when the rains come.

That’s why you cannot hold on to who you are.

And there is great joy in finding yourself every single day and saying in your own voice:

“I know who I am. I am the one that looks for me. And every single day, I find me again. I find myself in the things I do and the things I notice. I find myself in crowds and in solitude. I find myself in quiet moments and at the top of tall mountains. I find myself in the tips of waves, in forests, and in the books I read.

I find myself in leaves and rain and old photos.

Every single day, I find me again.”

And if you find someone with a head made of colors and a heart made of secrets, try to love them like they need to be loved.

About being anything:

There are days when everyone needs you to be strong, even if you’re dying inside, and you can only cry when
no one’s looking because you’re petrified of letting
them down.

And I know you know:

It can be so incredibly hard, just to be.

And hate?

Often, we hate people not because they have wronged us, but because they have reminded us of some secret part of ourselves that we don’t like.

Maybe, making peace with the world starts with
making peace with ourselves.

And sometimes anger is your body’s way of telling you that you’re ready to change things.

And while your anger can be useful,

you have no duty to it.

There is no register in the sky keeping track of whether or not you got angry as many times as you were
supposed to.

You get to decide what eats you up.

And you have no obligation to kindness.

You can be kind as often as you want.

Kindness is not a currency, and if you treat it like one, then that is not kindness.

Within you, there is all the kindness you will ever need.

Not everyone wins the lottery,

but everyone who does

bought a ticket.

To live the life you want,

you have to be brave

and buy the ticket every single day.

Because there is a God of moments

and he passes quickly,

you have to be ready to pray to him,

even for little things.

And we must be gardeners

of all the things we find in our hearts.

And we are only alive in the moments where we either overcome or forget the everyday fear that we are not who we tell people we are.

And

And

And

And

And

And

And

And

Remember:

Living the life you want,

after you live the life you have,

doesn’t actually work.

And now?

Show me how you tell someone that the thought of them spreads like a warm river through your soul, until it leaves through the eyes.

How do you tell someone that you would do everything
for them.

How do you explain that there is no greater force in the universe than the love you have in your heart for them.

How do you tell them that you know now why you’re Here.

Show me the words you would use, to try and say these things I cannot say.

And I will say them all.

This page is Here to tell you that it’ll be ok.

This page is Here for every time you were told you cannot do it, to tell you that you can.

This page is Here for every time you weren’t told anything at all.

So many people don’t know:

People come with instruction booklets written on their eyelids and they try and tell you the things that make them work, and about what breaks them, about how to carry them, but the world doesn’t listen, and we put people who shouldn’t be in water in water, and we use the wrong batteries and we leave them on too long and we cry when we lose them, aloud,

“Oh if only we’d known,

if only we’d listened.”

Don’t worry, time must pass, even in the

moments when it feels like it can’t, or shouldn’t.

“I wasn’t thinking about anything.”*

We all intend to be perfect but
none of us are.

If only we could all see each other as we

intended to be, instead of as who we are.

And we’re not everything we could be,

because we’re afraid to allow ourselves to exist all at once,
because too many people have told us not to.