Can your skin reflect light?

How is it easier for us to rationalize unhappiness than it is to create joy?

This question has been on my mind lately, mostly because of the melancholy that comes and goes into my space for numerous reasons. There are silly reasons and existential ones, and true ones and fake ones. You know when you just have too many reasons, and your brain begins flooding itself in untruth, in logical acceptance that growing up entails all of the above, and getting a grip on life means losing a grip on personal pleasure.

Life is hard, and the struggle remains where it is, ready for whoever seeks it, runs away from it, fears it and embraces it. We can stay there in that space, in that world. We can all develop sore souls and carpel tunnel fingers. We can all be there together; or that is what I truly feared most.

The fear that your days would blend into one elongated life were you sat behind a desk and typed. The fear that your relationship with your significant other had a limited life span and it was bound to implode. The fear that just because people agreed that we all must live in a certain way, then you too must conform. People “grow out” of those thoughts, that’s what is generally accepted. People “accept the pain” and carry on. People begin to live in bumper sticker logic and it becomes awfully sad to watch them do it.

How do you process your life and the lies it entails?

Imagine being a tree in a pot. A tree exists to live and to grow, in the same with humans. But our human experience disillusions us into despising growing older, but still wants us to grow up. So how do you make peace with growing only as much as your pot allows you to? Not a centimeter more because that would mean unhappiness and thirst. What would happen if your tree gets moved into earth, with no limits to its growth? It begins to reflect unapologetic life.

Look, I know there is a reason for my relentless need for growth and change and evolution. A therapist once explained to me- and therapists like to know best- that that was my brain’s way of responding to anxiety. So it is where I, and you, if you feel the same begin; exactly at the end. We begin at the end of things and move backwards to determine whether the life we are living will reflect light. We do not close our eyes and press the gas. For some reason our bumper stickers keep falling off.

So how do you know if your life reflects light?

Well, it begins with you. If I were to tell you that you will live your life like this exactly everyday, would you like that? Would it be a reflection of light onto yourself and those who cross your path?

The brave ones dive into the fear of failure, and the fear of not being loved, and the fear of being rejected and misunderstood. We are all frail bodies but do not underestimate the power of a well fed soul, a soul that overpowers the brain, a soul that can speak to you and guide you, where you just need to follow. Do not overestimate the power of logic. Our brains are beautiful tools but they are servants and not masters. Our brains allow us to create wonderful thoughts, plans and tricks to serve the purpose of our souls. So why not press a little softer on your heart and quiet down your brain and just create the safe space for your timid child soul to walk out.

Growing older does not mean we must break the locks and toughen up. Growing older is life manifesting itself in our skin and in our hair, but it has no qualms with our child soul.

It is NEVER too late; take that bumper sticker and paste it over your bed.

So if you seek peace in a glass of wine, or in the arms of strangers, if you spell your name and feel an immense weight glued to it, be gentler to yourself. And to be gentle we must stop and come to a complete halt of thought.

In that halt, we must go inside ourselves and discover what we have been burying in the dark. So we breathe and we might shed a few tears, we forgive and re rack our weights. We do this a few more times, and say thanks for all our blessings, and then slowly get back up. We imagine pushing a heavy rock down over a ledge as we walk away lighter and surely brighter.

That my friends, is how we reflect light.

Originally published at upliftingletters.com on April 10, 2019.