Being Human: A Staggering Act Of Near Impossible Bravery

you were born to be the hero of your own story

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

In this life, 
The move toward connection is everything.
It’s a stupendous act of blind faith,
A litany of hope,
A miracle of tender forgiveness.

It’s Jon Cusack and his ghetto blaster laying it all on the line. 
And Tom Cruise being so completely had at hello.
It’s every last time you’ve ever said yes knowing for sure that the only thing we can rest on is the fact that this all ends.

It’s in the way the human heart extends again and again into the abyss.

The way we’ve been sending probes and animals and people into space for decades and we still have not stopped dreaming one day someone will send something back to the tenacious hope of our open arms, just so we can know for sure that we are not alone.

We haven’t ever been alone here, love.
When everything feels lost there is only one way to be found.

Lean In.

It’s not protection the castle needs now.
Open the drawbridge.
Fill in the moat with wildflowers.
Make daisy chain wreaths for the soldiers returning from war. 

Press tin can stars from the suits of armor that have protected the entry for centuries. Hang them from chain mail ropes woven with twinkle lights powered by stars that burned strong enough that we could still see them after they were already long gone.
Can you Imagine the stubborn strength it takes to shine like that?
Of course you can, love, it's all you've ever known.

Lean in.

Stand down the army.
Magician yourself into a white flag of invitation.
Call the peace doves into roost in the attic of your heartbreak.
Bury your weapons in the garden.
Trust them to grow into something beautiful.

Love, you are growing into something so very beautiful.
But only because beautiful is the only thing you’ve ever been. 

Lean in. 

I’ll find you in the middle of the once-was-a-battle-field playground. 
The place Rumi called the field beyond right-doing and wrong-doing. 
Like he said, just meet me there.

I know you’re tired, it’s exhausting holding the fight in your bones for so long. 
Together we will lay down a bed made of rose petals and the soft yet tenacious belief that there was always something more. We’ll make love under the watchful eye of whatever else might be out there in a faraway galaxy wishing on the impossible chance of our existence. 

Yes, war may seem like an inevitable part of the human condition.
We’re so very good at the breakdown. 
And so utterly invested in holding the line. 
But so is peace, love.
Inevitable, I mean.

Inevitable like the breath of surrender that escapes your lover’s lips just before she nestles her head against the home of your chest.
Right when she remembers that the cadence of your heart has always been a lighthouse, but only because it is so like her own. 
That kind of inevitable.

We are made for the part that comes after the fight. 
For the unfolding into the soft and the impossibly holy.
Made to show up for whatever it is that proves itself a worthy instigator of the undoing of our own skeptical disbelief. 

Yes, being human is a staggering act of near-impossible bravery.
But you were born to be the hero of your own story. 
And true heroes do not try to do it alone.

Lean all the way in. 

I promise, 
I’ll catch you if you fall.
Or you’ll catch me. 
Or some form of life out there in this miracle of a universe will catch us both.

Either way, there are arms at the ready,
I promise.
Strong enough to hold us all. 

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