A friend wrote this on their wall 'Life is much too short to not say what you feel. so, let it be known. who knows, you may find someone else seeking the same...' Beautiful isn't it.
We are feeling pushers. Oh yeah, we will hang out on street corners and try and push our feelings on to you, try and make you feel something, try and take the feelings you've got, try and take all your feelings, try and substitute our own feelings. I look around, everyone's looking for feeling replacement therapy; there's instant feeling replacement on offer everywhere and depending on how much you pay you can get all sorts of feelings, and a few folks will try and gain control of them and they call it religion, and other folk will unleash them and call it art - we're all hardcore feeling pushers, longterm addicts either looking for the next hit, or recovering addicts trying to find a way out or through.
Well, so, how do I feel? I feel pretty broke. My life's been really tough from the word go. The brightest places have been some of the people I've met, some of the places I've been to. The places where trees are giants, and dragonflies reflect the sunlight and the water.The brightness of kindness, a word spared carefully and thoughtfully, a little care taken, and a moment given freely. Sometimes it's simply recognising the knowing you know. Some small human moments as we speed downstream.
And there's all sorts of waterfalls on the way and rapids, but occasionally you find yourself floating on your back looking up at a glorious blue sky thinking 'This makes it all worthwhile' Or watching the delight on a child's face, their rapture as they marvel at the things we walk over and talk over in our adult musings. I feel tired by so many sufferings small and big and it's worth saying. It's worth saying because it's the truth. It's much harder for me to smile. So if you see a smile on my face, it's not without effort, it's hard won, it's been fought for. I know how much a smile can cost and that's why I'm so grateful for them. Really you can put a value on happiness, it is priceless. A smile doesn't necessarily equate happiness though. Happiness is a bit like forgetfulness to me, it's that moment you find yourself free and light and joyful because there's nothing else other than the source of your happiness. I didn't have any kind of source for a very long time. I made my smile come out of all sorts of difficult, my smiling actually hurt.
And that's a human thing that is, a hurting smile, a breaking heart, a walking grief. We have to wear all our endings alongside our beginnings and middles. We keep trying to go forward in something we call our 'lives' even as hurricanes and earthquakes threaten, and sometimes even as the floor begins to fall away beneath our feet. We keep going forward when there is nothing to go forward with. I marvel at that.
So how do I feel. I'm broken yes, but the thing about something that's been broken is that it becomes unbreakable, the only road to take is the one towards wholeness. So perhaps the broken smile becomes a brighter one, there's no pretense of everything being OK. In fact it's OK to be present, to sit round the fire with all our vulnerables hanging out, with our hearts on our sleeves, with our badges of grief - so be it. It's nice sitting here round this fire. I'd like to sit here a while checking out the stars, listening to the stories.
I don't know when that next moment will come of happiness and lightness, that moment of forgetting all but the source of our happiness. But what I do know is that it will come. I'm a little shy of the moment, yes, life's taught me weariness, but I am totally prepared for unexpected surprises, my guard is always down, that's why the tears come freely, and that's why I laugh at the most inappropriate times! If we're going to live life, we might as well do it with all of ourselves present and if that includes me, all of me from beginning to end, so be it.
You will meet the me who has stood on top of mountains after trudging up snowy slopes since the dark before dawn, and the me who has jumped from one rock to another with the depth of Tryfan's chasm leaping away below, or who has stood in the Atlantic in the freezing water for hour after hour holding a surf board waiting for waves, or the me who has walked and skied in the wind and rain with a 60lb pack, or me who cried as I tried to resuscitate my Dad after his heart gave out, or me after I watched a car fly up in the air and land on its side and had to pull a mother and baby out, or maybe it will be the me who gave up, quite a few times when I couldn't handle the pain any more, or lack of sleep, and discovered that even when you've given up or you're homeless that you don't cease to exist, maybe that will be the me that's present, or maybe it will be me who bakes cakes, makes tea, and likes finding wild herbs by the roadside and picking blackberries. There's a lot of me. There's a lot of all of us, between birth and death an awful lot happens, shed loads. Birth itself is pretty bloody amazing right, and death is surely our common denominator and there's a fair bit in between we also get to share. So for my part if sharing what we feel is what makes us - us. Then this is it...
I have had a lot of feelings, and they change, all the time, I don't think it's who I am, but it's not who I'm not either, I've been all those feelings, every one of them, dark and light, or in that penumbra, in the inbetween. So it's pretty tricky for me to answer how I feel, because it never stays the same. Even happiness is never the same twice, and sadness is remarkably full of colours. Let it be known how you feel, because it's precious and the sharing of it is precious too, it lets us see how deep we go and how far and how high. I can't see it so clearly unless the reflection is deep. I get lost otherwise and swirl around abit. People are anchors for each other, and ports in a storm, and life believe me, is a storm and storms always have rainbows. I think feelings have colours too and I think like rainbows and storms, that they come out of the sky and go back to it, we're just the holding space.
Blessed really, flowers only hold their colours for a while before their petals wilt, even butterflies get ragged so quickly, but we carry on holding so much, year after year. That's what it means being 'seasoned' - you've held all those springs, all those summers, autumns and winters and you're still standing, a bit beat up maybe, a bit gnarled like that hollow tree. There's a lot of experiences to experience and some bear doing more than once and there's a few where once is definitely enough! Some old folks will look at the young folks worries and they could say 'Pff!' because they know... but they don't, they just listen with that knowing and occasionally say something that's worth hearing. Why worry...?
It happens, sometimes the next day is staring at you like a shotgun at pointblank range - ouch! That's a hefty worry, and there's sometimes a whole team of shotgun wielders just waiting for you to wake up! But we get through that day and the firefight never happened, and even if it did it was nothing like expected, even if it was, if we're not dead, yippee. 'I wish I knew what it was all for...', but does therehave to be a 'for?' , it's unfathomable anyway, but even if it was fathomable, what good does it serve knowing? Normally our knowing evolves through our life experiences, because of our feelings. So what good does it do knowing... like knowing fire is hot, knives have sharp edges, that love lies somewhere in between? Let it be known feelings are hot and have edges, there are no warning signs, you will not be prepared, the ones to listen to are those who have lasted the longest and are still smiling, even though their scars and wrinkles say otherwise, other-wise. You bear things with age, you bear the heat, the sharpness, the aches, all of the edges of life. Let it be known feelings are turbulent oceans and shiftting plates, feelings pin you down in a crossfire, feelings clear and cure and carve, feelings create.
We are feeling pushers. Oh yeah, we will hang out on street corners and try and push our feelings on to you, try and make you feel something, try and take the feelings you've got, try and take all your feelings, try and substitute our own feelings. I look around, everyone's looking for feeling replacement therapy; there's instant feeling replacement on offer everywhere and depending on how much you pay you can get all sorts of feelings, and a few folks will try and gain control of them and they call it religion, and other folk will unleash them and call it art - we're all hardcore feeling pushers, longterm addicts either looking for the next hit, or recovering addicts trying to find a way out or through.
Feelings are hot and have edges - let it be known.
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