A Birthday
Being Richly Human
What is the human experience?
Some will say love, others pain. Perhaps it is neither or both. In the same fold you have why do we exist as humans? Why is there life?
I don't think anyone knows the answers because there is no answer, instead the answer is we find this purpose within ourselves and that is the purpose. Self-love and self-knowledge. Knowing how to love yourself and loving to know about yourself.
How are you under pressure? Do you like your toast crunchier or softer? How do you deal with the darkest parts of yourself? When did you learn your first curse word?
We spend the most times stuck with one person. Ourselves. Even if we never live alone or have hours of time stuck up in an office by ourselves we still have our minds. It's impossible to share with anyone the depth of our minds, our mindset, our likes, dislikes, the unique perspective and perception we have on every single thing in the universe.
So why don't some people learn about themselves? Why do some even fear being all alone, especially with their thoughts? I can agree, too much of this isn't good, but many of us are deprived of not having enough alone time.
Why don't some people love themselves? And not in the cheesy way of buying yourself a new gadget or indulging in dessert. How many of us look in the mirror at our patterns, our habits, our hangups, our pains, our wrong doings against others, and face them head on?
Most of us think being rich means financial wealth. But how are we happy or claim to be ourselves if we do not know ourselves (not fully because we never will because there is so much to know and we are always evolving) or love ourselves?
No matter who leaves us, abandons us, abuses us, breaks us down, forgets us...we are always there. We can push ourselves down, gaslight ourselves into forgetting everything, distract ourselves out the wazoo, but we're still there.
Every part of us. Your childhood self. Your teenage self, and so on and so on as you age and until your physical body is gone. Why do we shun these parts of ourselves? They're not just stuck in the past, we take them with us wherever we go.
If we refuse to heal these parts of ourselves we are neglecting the potential wisdom that lies in the healing. We will never be fully healed such as I said earlier we will never fully know ourselves, because evolution. New scars appears, some scars fester back up. Life happens.
How do we expect ourselves to ever devote ourselves to something (work, person, art) when we can't even have devotion for ourselves?
There is such rich fulfilment in acknowledging ourselves and making a pact, that we're not going to continue on with life without loving and learning about ourselves. I am not saying this is easy either. Actual true self-love, can be difficult at times, especially at the beginning and especially when you face your shadow self. But I promise you this, it is the most worth it.
This is a journey. No one has a map. But you have your intuition, your self-love, your self-devotion, and finally what will start to show itself: your pure joy.
Hope in a Fragile World
It seems to me I am fighting for hope on a daily level. There are hills and valleys throughout the day of the range of my fears and emotions. It can be predicted by the media I consume or the events of my day. It is always wavering- yet there is always a guarantee of hope.
I often must remind myself of the hope, especially in a world that is focused on the clicks and views of desperation and fear. A world that does not want you to consume and be consumed by art. A world that would rather you dig through the mud and bury your art. That does not seek you to love but chase after things out of greed.
I did a rebirthing ritual last year that turned my world upside down. I made a sigil and ended up getting that symbol tattooed on myself. Because I wasn't just rebirthed simply one time, it is a daily occurrence. It happens when I finish a book. I am not the same woman after having a conversation with a friend. Or watching a sunset.
And like being rebirthed, our hope can be re-sparked. It is a daily fire we must tend to. Every single article of chaos and destruction douses the fire, but every time we laugh can flick the flames back to life.
Hope does not mean we do not struggle. It simply means we have something to keep our eye on as we are fighting. It gives us reason to fight in the first place. The fire warms us, heals us.
The destruction wins when we give is. When we let it extinguish our flame and we wallow in the misery of life. Daily we must get back up after life has knocked us down. Hope is not something we wait for, but simply something we choose.
We choose it by smiling at nature around us, by taking out our paint brushes, by surrounding us with other people who have chosen to tend to their fires.
So today, tend to your fire.