My Life So Far

"the world is not respectable: it is mortal,
tormented, confused, deluded forever;
but it is shot through with beauty,
with love, with glints of courage and laughter;
and in these, the Spirit blooms."

(George Santayana)

Wherever possible, and to the extent that you are able- live with your heart wide open to the possibilities of love and redemption.

Where life is painful and difficult, it is tempting to judge relationships as unworthy of their labour. We learn to guard ourselves against their inevitable disappointment, vulnerability and risks of rejection. But as these sadnesses and bruises fall, by our refusal to build them into cages, they compost into regenerative possibility.

The wide brush with which we paint people (and thereby reject them) leaves us too small a canvas to then adequately create our lives. It is people- our relationships with each other, our willingness or unwillingness to engage and give, and the risks we take in flowing and in out of each others' worlds that make our lives wealthy, beautiful, and worthwhile.

"We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow-men;
along those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes,
and they come back to us as effects."
... Herman Melville