Every Second

If you were my best friend and we were talking on the phone, this is what I'd tell you when you'd ask me how I'm doing:

Every second is a new lesson.
I still cry every other day, but I really don't care anymore.
I am so much stronger, mentally, than I've ever been before.
Not one single tangible goal matters to me. The only thing I care about is practicing love.
Tangible goals are still made. But practicing love is the eggs I put my basket in when all else goes to shit.
When you practice love with all your heart, it will definitely--definitely--take you outside of your comfort zone.
You will consciously choose to do things you've never consciously chosen to do before.
And you will feel terrified and weak and on top of the world and insane and more alive than ever before, all at once.
And every other lifestyle will seem like a boring, half-hearted alternative.

You can do anything you want. Anything at all. As long as love is your primary motivation.
But you have to be in it for the whole package.
And the whole package--when you're really practicing love with all your heart--includes the risk of being with things that suck. I mean, things that really suck.
You can choose to be with the sucky stuff in compassion or in drama.
Eventually, you realize that being with the sucky stuff in drama makes it a whole lot harder.
So compassion becomes your saving grace and you begin to thank God that the sucky stuff ever came up at all because it taught you how to soften your heart.
How to laugh at what you can't control.
How to cry just because you needed the release.
How to hold sadness or fear or fury with the kindest kind of force.
You begin to know that you are truly capable of anything. Anything at all.
And that the strongest mental tool you could ever dream of is forgiveness.

Self forgiveness.
For all the times you forgot to practice love when your own heart was enduring the suckiest of suck.
When your own body was pushing to its very last breath.
When your own spirit was doing everything it could to hold the rest of you together.
And you still called yourself names.
And you still berated yourself for all the traits you didn't have.
And you still let yourself spiral down into the weakest of places, uncared for and alone.
For this too, you can make amends.
For this too, you can know that you are no less than anyone else.
For this too, you can forgive yourself.
We are all subject to the wrath of our inner demons.
So much so, that it's the most miserable place our comfort zone knows.
The place we stay a few decades too many.
The place in which we set up camp and begin to call home... the way it is... who I am.
The place we can leave to practice love--a love that is long overdue.
But a love that has no time limit or expiration date.

Truly, it may sound like something only people like me do.
People who choose to ride their bicycles across the country.
People who write blogs and use words like "soul" or "spirit".
People who cut off all their hair or have life coaches or play ukuleles.
But it's not.
It's for people who know or hope or wonder if their heart has a secret it's been trying to tell them for years.
It's for people who can barely pretend to whisper that secret out loud.
It's for people too absolutely terrified or confused or skeptical to even admit they know something's missing.
It's for people who have a longing.
Any longing at all.
And a desire to fulfill that longing.
It's for people who believe, somewhere in their hearts, that love was the force that birthed them.
And it's about time we enter back into that place, with practice, with gentleness, with each other.

Every second is a new lesson.
I still cry every other day, but I really don't care anymore.
I am so much stronger, mentally, than I've ever been before.

I believe so deeply that these words I've written are true.
That we are made for love in all it's many forms.
That we are made to practice together.
That you and I both can do anything we want. Anything at all. As long as we are guided by love.

Welcome to the adventure.
It's absolutely insane.
And absolutely magnificent.

I hope it treats you as well as it's treating me.
Tough love.
Some breaks.
Infinite lessons.
Deep fulfillment.


You have my deepest blessings. Keep me updated, will ya? :)