What is it that you most need to hear right now?
I ask that to myself, and I ask that to the invisible reader (hi hello there, you’re not actually invisible—I just can’t see you). But as I draft and re-draft and scrap and re-scrap these notes, this is the question that my little mind-CD keeps skipping back to.
It makes me think of all the needing and all the longing that’s permeated every person. It makes me hold up my own needing and longing to the light so I can criticize the thinness of it all. My answer lies somewhere in between the “get over yourselves” and the “be kind to yourselves” that bookend the conversations on social.
What I need to hear right now, and maybe you do too, is that things are bad and sad and getting worse, and also that there is, even now, hope. That there is, at this moment, a cute baby being born, or a very fluffy rabbit doing a binky, or someone trying good coffee for the first time.
It’s always both/and; the sadness is always lurking alongside the joy—they’re twins who traverse time together. Longing, both of them, for acknowledgement and a gentle embrace.
Personally, I developed my early personality on a foundation of “no bad vibes,” which ironically, was very bad. I’ve washed myself of that Pearberry Positivity body spray I wore when I was younger; but there’s still some Naive Night Cream lingering right around my puffy eyes. Mostly, I’m trying to remove harsh chemical remnants of things that do not serve me, without ignoring sadness.
Without forgetting joy.
Here’s another little ditty for you, a practical reminder I wrote to myself to step out of my to-do list and into my senses.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, text your friend to check on her and her new baby, and wake up your senses like it’s the first day of your life.
And a final tidbit, for laughs or for tears, if you’ve got em: