Youthful Life: X

"The need for connection and community is primal, as fundamental as the need for air, water, and food." Dean Ornish Giving up on people with purpose can provide us peace. Spending time away from people who forsake us helps provide us the necessary clarity to choose to let them go. Sometimes you just don’t check-in with people and suddenly two weeks, a month, or 6 months have passed. Let it be. Resist the urge and eventually it goes away. Flimsy connections fade when not reinforced especially when no solid foundation is to be found. This is not the people we may not talk to for months or years at a time but remain bonded to steadfast. This is the people who never quite make it past the constant assurance phase, and when that affirmation is no longer provided, we question the connection or feel like its dissipated. We know the difference. We have to listen to that difference. People are not meant to be so much effort. We don't have to win people over. People are not mean...

" The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile." "Try your best to make goodness attractive. That's one of the toughest assignments you'll ever be given." Fred Rogers Truth, above all else . I am reminded more and more how often people look to us to set the tone of our conversations. It is only when we "lead" by example that people can do the same. All it takes is us being brave for one moment so the people we're looking to connect with can be empowered to also release their truths. Often what we really want to say is just below the surface, and all of us are well aware of it but hesitate long enough for the moment to pass. The thing is there's not just one moment for us to speak with candor. Those moments can be infinite if we choose them to be. We don't necessarily have to wait for the right time; we can make our own. Hell, we can even tee-up our "big...

" You haven’t healed, I can tell from how cruel you are.” Warsan Shire We're all carrying things with us. Some of things we're carrying visibly weigh on us while others are cloaked but remain heavy nonetheless. The thing about heaviness is that we have the potential to transform it. Oftentimes we get caught up in believing that the hardships we carry will be part of us for our entireties. In reality, we can shift the weight, redistribute it, or even better lighten the load. I don't think we ever really unload all that has stayed with us but I do believe that we can compact it, extract its essence, and convert it into something more manageable or even useful. What a powerful sentiment. There's hope in that.  If we don't have to hold all this heaviness forever that can mean a great deal for us. That means that how we feel, what we're holding, and how we're carrying it will not always be this way. Things aren't hopeless. While some things may...

“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”Fred Rogers You know who is awe-inspiringly human ... kids . Children are the most remarkable embodiment of what humanity can be. What would our world look like if we sought to emulate the humanity of children? We have our humanity tamed as we grow older. Children are carefree, fearless, and zany. They show affectionate readily, communicate candidly, and ask questions. Their curiosity for the world around them is their greatest asset. Kids are weird. They do things without reason but also have this profound worldview that is less clouded by socialization. They don't hold back for better or worse. They cry, express joy, laugh a whole lot, and feel their feelings. They can be so human it hurts.  We ...

"The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon. We are never tired, so long as we can see far enough." Ralph Waldo Emerson I am tired. I am absolutely exhausted. I am completely depleted. I don't think I have ever felt this tired in the entirety of my life. There's something distinctly about the tiredness I'm experiencing as of late. It's not just that my body feels unrested regardless of how much I sleep, it's the general lethargy that pervades through the days. Life is tiring. Having to be a person all of the time is depleting. Needing to do, needing to be, and needing to know is a whole lot. There's so little room and time for existing without the world or the people in it needing or wanting something from me. I have found myself turning off my phone and disconnecting more and more. I just disappear and pretend to not exist for a little while. It's almost peaceful but I know what awaits me when I return from my few moments of solitude is ...

"Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever." Ray Bradbury Space - the final frontier. Positing life as a representation of space and all its wonders has come to be a useful metaphor for understanding the world. We are all the center of our own universes, or at least we're supposed to be. Sometimes we aren't. What happens when others in our experiences are centered in our lives or we don't perceive ourselves to be in the middle of our existences? My therapist called it a sort of a blackhole effect where the position that we should be finding ourselves in is instead occupied by a force that seems nearly impossible to overcome. Usually it has to do with children and not being fully positioned in the center of their lives growing up that forces them to take care of themselves sooner than usual, essentially becoming a full-grown star early. It's gravitational pull drawing absolute...

" The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It's the loneliness of it.  Memories need to be shared.” Lois Lowry Memories are all we have to make life real . Memories are what we cherish to carry all that has come before us. Memories are all that we truly are. What a year. What happened this year? What the actual fuck happened this year? How could this year be real? I have struggled to write this post because life is not some absolute balance weighing the benevolence of this isolated period of time. Simple me wants to say this has been by far the worst year of my life to date. Complex me knows that life not a scale that tips positive or negative. Life has nuance. Life has meaning when we assign it meaning. Life is life.  I think there is profound meaning in memory preservation, and there is immense importance in memory creation. We are tasked with doing both in our lives - holding on to the remnants of the past, and maneuvering to create our presents an...

" Stop holding your truth; speak your truth. Be yourself. It's the healthiest way to be."  T iffany Haddish What are we afraid of? Why do we hold back? How are we stopping ourselves from saying what our hearts yearn to say? So much of life, connection, and relationship is left unsaid. We hold back from sharing what is on our minds for a multitude of reasons. What we don't realize is what we lose in the process of stifling our voices. When we shut ourselves down we teach ourselves that we - all of us, our truths, our stories, our thoughts, are not worth sharing. The more the we do, the more we reinforce that the words we have to offer are unworthy of the air. Smaller, and smaller our voices become until we talk ourselves out of sharing our voices at all. It is wise to be thoughtful in what we share, but intentionality is also sharing bravely. The things that we stop just short of saying often are precisely what we need to say. It's right there. It's jus...

"It is not length of life, but depth of life." Ralph Waldo Emerson Death is a natural part of life but that doesn't make it any easier to handle. Death has been part of the human life cycle for millennia, and it's still the worst thing that people can experience. Death comes for all of us, and we can feel its inevitable aftermath as devastating. What is there to say about death besides that nothing and no one prepares us for the despair it leaves us with. It is so beyond the scope of our understanding that we malfunction just trying to wrap our heads around what it means. How can someone we love die? How can they be gone forever? How can I never speak to them, hear from them, or touch them ever again? For the rest of our lives? That can't be real. How can someone who has been part of all my days be absent from them for the rest of my days? It's not fair. It doesn't make sense. It's unbelievable. It is beyond belief. Things beyond belief do not ...