Love, Bravery and the Truth

What do you desire?

Will you tell me?

How do we bridge the space between us?

Tell me your desire

Otherwise how will I ever be able to meet it?

Or have you fallen so in love with yearning that you’d rather keep it to yourself and never realize it?

Is yearning the best you can give yourself?

… the default you’ve settled for to avoid the disappointment when what you wanted turns out to not be all that you imagined it would be, all that you hoped?

Why cheat yourself? Safety is a boring illusion.

How about this: how about we make a promise to ourselves to give and receive everything with open hearts, even if it means we may have them torn out and handed back to us in shreds and may get so battered and bruised that we no longer recognize ourselves?

We can do this. We can afford to be brave.

Because I’ll tell you what: It’s a secret no one wants you to know. Because, if you knew, their game would be up. And those who have stumbled upon it don’t speak about it; they’re afraid if they give it away they’ll lose their edge. And also, they reason, it’s just too easy; no one will believe them anyway. People would rather have their pills. We’ve gotten so used to putting our faith in things outside ourselves, drowning out our own innate wisdom that we no longer recognize we are our own medicine. The world may fuck us up, but we can always heal ourselves. We have that power. We have always had that power and we always will. And all we have to do to reclaim it is to remember:

Every fucked up thing that’s happened to make us gun shy, wasn’t our fault. It wasn’t even personal. It’s just something that happened while we were distracted by someone else’s idea of reality that we bought while we were looking outside ourselves for validation.

The truth is we’ve been conned. Our egos don’t want to admit this; what ego wants to admit it’s been duped? But that unwillingness to own our own shit is what keeps the truth away from us. You see, none of this is really our fault. Fear is a powerful motivator that none of us is immune to. It’s used to control us. We even use it to control ourselves.

And it will have us betray ourselves over and over and over again.

There are two components to the antidote that I can figure.

The first is love.

And I don’t mean the love that was modeled to you as a child; that was born out of fear, too.

I mean the kind of love that defies logic. The kind of love that would have a stranger take a bullet for a child. The kind of love firefighters demonstrate when they run into burning buildings. The kind of love that acknowledges that we are all in this together. Whatever this is.

The kind of love that sees who we are and wants to know more. The kind that knows nobody wins unless everybody wins, that does not tolerate discrimination of any kind. The kind of love that doesn’t confuse you, the kind you can feel and know it’s that thing they say is the reason we’re here.

The other component is the truth.

Always holding ourselves accountable for speaking it knowing that it may not be anyone else’s truth, and the person you’re talking to may dismiss, or perhaps even want to destroy you for speaking it.

So there’s a third component: bravery. Having the guts to say the thing that no one else is saying even if it puts you at odds with your friends; the ones who think they know you, but don’t. They may feel betrayed and that’s okay. Better they feel betrayed than you betray yourself. And your real friends will be relieved. They want to see and feel all of you.

These are the gifts we have to give each other.

Our love, our truth, our bravery.