Connections

Yesterday I got my first iPhone, an early Christmas present from my mother. It is a beautiful little thing, sleek and light and colorful. I spent hours downloading apps and organizing my interests into icons. It is amazing how much of myself I can fit inside something so small. I can hold my life in my hands.

All night my new phone dinged and pinged and swooshed with notifications of lives that went on living after I closed my eyes to sleep. And for all of the complaints there are about social media, about the over-sharing and the publicness and the distraction from the “real world” (whatever that is), I am continually grateful for every little noise that reminds me I am connected. I am not alone. I have an entire network of people literally at my fingertips. There is something really remarkable about that.

The work of my life is to connect. Every day I try to make connections – between myself and other people, between the past and the present, between what I know and what I feel. Every word I write makes a connection between one idea and the next. Every thought I think makes a connection between me and everything else. Every moment is a linking and a synching to the rest of the world.

On Wednesday night I had dinner with a dear friend, and we had a conversation that I will hold in my heart for the rest of my life. It was a beautiful little thing, to sit across from someone and connect, to understand and to be understood, to fit so much of ourselves inside something as small as a conversation. Every little noise – the sound of yes and I know and me too – reminded me that I am not alone. I have an entire someone who I connect with entirely. And there is something really remarkable about that. It is no small thing.

At times it can feel as though the world is the wrong size, or you are the wrong size in it – too big or too small for what surrounds you. The dimensions are constantly shifting. You get stretched and crushed and pushed around a lot. It is impossible to remain fixed as any one shape. It is foolish to try. What doesn’t bend, breaks.

The only way to survive is to expand and to shrink, and to know when each is necessary. Sometimes you can hold your life in your hands, and sometimes you need to be held by someone else. Sometimes you are sleek and light. Sometimes you are rough and dark. We all go through this. All of us.

And the only way to understand that is to connect. It is to open the icon of other worlds, to step inside them, to listen to their stories and to contribute some of your own. It is more than being social. It is more than networking. It is the sharing of a life. It is the sharing of yourself.

It is an invitation and a gift. “Come in,” you say. “Be a part of this. Understand and be understood. Love and be loved. You are exactly the right size and shape for my life. You fit into my world perfectly. Come. Let’s hold each other’s lives in our hands. Let’s never have to feel like we’re alone.”

Adventure

My little brother and I ran away from home once. We packed tiny backpacks full of toys. We were angry about something I can’t remember, and we wanted our mother to know. But we didn’t want her to worry too much. And we didn’t want to get into trouble. So we left a note telling her where we would be. We made it as far as the other side of the street before she found us, and hugged us, and brought us back home.

I have run away a lot since then. Not from my mother, but from myself, from my life, from anger and sadness and my own terrifying potential. I have made it as far as the other side of the world. I have had extraordinary adventures. But always, I’ve come back home.

And as much as I’ve tried, I have learned each time, that you cannot outrun your life. The old problems are always there waiting for you. Some stay behind until you return. Some follow you wherever you go. Some never leave you and become a part of who you are. I know this to be true.

Still, there are mornings I wake up and feel that familiar urge to escape. If I could only be somewhere else, I could be someone else. I could be the person I want to be. I could live the life I want to live. If only I could leave all this behind.

The older I get, the more difficult this becomes. There are more reasons to stay. But those reasons are obligations. They are financial and practical and the exact opposite of fun. They are what I’d be running away from.

I know that you don’t have to leave to have an adventure. I know that I’m already having one, just by being alive. But I also know that having a life full of extraordinary adventures means that everything else feels too ordinary. You know what exists beyond your own life. You know there is so much more. And it calls to you – often and loudly. And always, you want to go.

The distance between one adventure and another grows longer with each passing year. I am comfortable inside my skin, but I am restless inside my life. It has always felt good to come home, but I have always wanted to leave again. There is still so much to explore. There are still so many adventures to be had. There are still so many lives I haven’t yet lived.

Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast, about who or where I could be. I have made a whole world out of nonsense. I have asked so many questions without answers. I have been lost and frustrated and confused. I have remembered things backwards and forwards. I have slipped in and out of dreams.

How did Alice return home after Wonderland? How did she fill the void of the magic lost? I’d really like to ask her how it felt the next day to walk by flowers that didn’t speak, and see cats that didn’t smile, and know that her un-birthday would pass by without celebration.

I’d really like to ask her if she spent the rest of her days searching for another rabbit hole, if she longed in every moment for another escape.

Holding Close

I’m a hugger. It’s just what I do. If I could find a way to fit the entire world between my arms, I would keep it there, holding tight, always. Not because it belongs to me, or I belong to it, but because we belong to each other, and that’s something worth embracing.

I have found no better way to say hello or goodbye or I love you. The language of the body is often more powerful than words. Every hug is an invitation. Opening your arms is a way of asking, “Please, come in.” Holding someone close is a way of telling them, “And stay forever, if you like.”

And people do, stay forever I mean. Because once you have held someone within your arms, you never forget the feel of it. You never forget the way their body fit against your own. You never forget what was said between you without the use of words.

And so you take those people with you wherever you go. You carry the memories of their hugs and those unspoken conversations. You remember what it felt like to be happy and sad and in love inside someone else’s arms. There is nothing that can compare to such comfort. There is no fire that can rival its warmth.

And although you keep those hugs, adding them to your collection, they never belong solely to you. Hugging is a shared experience. You can be the giver or the recipient or both, but never neither. You cannot do it alone.

Hugs are not ownership. Holding someone close does not hold anyone back. It moves two people forward, together, in friendship and in love. It is my favorite gift to give and receive. It is my favorite greeting and apology and unexpected surprise. It is the closest I have ever come to being able to hold the world between my arms.

I hug tightly. I hug fully. I hug as though hugging is all I have to offer, which is sometimes true. Those are often the best hugs, the ones that arrive out of desperation, when all other forms of comfort have failed. Those are the hugs that save us. Those are the hugs that last.

I have a friend who is the world’s greatest hugger. He’s always been that way. And although there are many things that I admire and adore about him, I associate him most with this skill. When I think of him, I think of hugs. I think of delight and comfort and love. I think of the way he has often saved me, simply by opening his arms and allowing me to come in.

All my life, I have tried to return this favor. Not just to him, but to all. I have tried to embrace the world with warmth and comfort and love. I have tried to share these feelings. I have tried to speak without words.

All my life, I have held people close. Not to keep them from leaving, but to ensure we take each other with us wherever we go. I have extended so many invitations. I have accepted so many offerings. I have clung to these gifts forever.

Tragedy

It’s raining this morning. We woke up to bad news. Terrible, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching news.

And like all bad news, I’ve had to sit with it for a while before attempting to speak. My thoughts are always a little delayed. “This is so sad,” becomes “no really, this is SO sad” which eventually becomes “no really, this is devastatingly tragic.” I feel it instantly, but it takes longer to find the words. I am glad to have the day off.

What I want to say has already been said – my heart goes out to the victims, to their families, to everyone who woke up this morning and couldn’t find words. I feel the weight of our mutual sadness. I’m so sorry for all that’s been lost. There are no words that can help ease that pain.

But what I also want to say is that I have feelings about what happened last night in Colorado that extend beyond this incident alone, and they will be unpopular, but I need to express them, if only for my own attempts at understanding.

The outside world can be a sad and terrifying place. Bad things happen. Single moments can define us, and change us, and leave us feeling heartbroken and alone. We can lose everything in an instant. These violent acts remind us of that uncertainty. It is impossible to feel unaffected.

Because while what we feel is immense sympathy for the victims, what we also feel is a kind of egocentric sympathy for ourselves. We are all this vulnerable. None of us are safe from hurt.

It isn’t about us as the onlookers of these tragedies, but also, it is. It is about all of us. It is part of the human story. It reminds us that there’s still so much work to be done. There is far too much suffering and far too much pain. There are far too many stories that resemble this one.

People keep writing “what is the world coming to?” But the world is already here. We’ve been through this before. And as much as it pains us to admit, we’ll be through it again. The power of a single act will continue to overwhelm us, in the best and worst of ways. This too, is part of the human story.

And part of my human story is the inexplicable – perhaps disgraceful – part of me that feels something for the culprits of these unthinkable acts. It is not sympathy. What they have done is hideous and unforgivable. I could not, and would not, and am not defending them.

But there is something inside of me that recognizes that these are people in pain. Desperate, unrecognized and untreated pain. How sad and lonely and crazy the inside of their heads must be. And how can we ignore that this is happening? How can we keep allowing guns to be placed in irresponsible hands? How can we not be working harder to save one another, and protect one another, and use the boundless power of our voices and actions for good?

I’m not so naïve to think that everyone can be saved. I know that no amount of hugs would have stopped this from happening, as much as I’d like to live in a world where that were true. But I do know that there is a problem here, and it is not about a lack of emergency exits or security at the door. It is something larger, and sadder, and more terrifying. And we seem unwilling as a society and a species to address it.

There are people who feel trapped in the world that exists inside of them, worlds that can feel even more sad and terrifying than anything happening outside. And it leads them to do horrible, unforgivable things. And we don’t talk about that. And we don’t do enough to fix it. And we keep waiting for terrible things to happen before we allow ourselves to feel connected to each other.

And that is sad. No really, it is SO sad. No really, it is devastatingly tragic.

And while I don’t have answers, I do have knowledge, and it tells me that nothing can get better without change.

Advice

The world, it seems, is always offering up advice. “Don’t give up,” it tells you, but equally it asks that you learn to let go. More than once I have tried to outrun my unhappiness, and more than once I have stayed to face it head-on. Make no mistake that neither choice is easy. Both require strength. Both are acts of courage.

I don’t what courage is, exactly, but I know it when I see it. Sometimes it is obvious, taking the form of activists, and leaders, and groups of people willing to stand up for what they believe is right. Sometimes it is a single voice speaking out against what’s wrong. Sometimes it is loud and ubiquitous and can appear to be so easy that we forget it is something extraordinary.

And sometimes it is ordinary. It is waking up each morning and starting all over again. It is daring to put one foot in front of the other, one day behind the next, to keep moving forward in a life that you may or may not cherish. Don’t ever underestimate the bravery it takes to keep living. It is far more difficult than death.

The world tells you that your time here is short. You have to follow your heart. You have to live in the moment. You can’t afford to spend one second on anything that doesn’t make you happy. But equally the world demands that you be practical. You have to plan for the future. You have to work hard. You have to participate in things that you may or may not enjoy.

Because your life could end tomorrow, but also, it could not, and so in every moment we make decisions and gamble on our time. Every moment we must ask ourselves “what if this is my final moment?” and equally “what if there are a million more to come?”

This is the cost, or perhaps the gift, of being human. We can understand time, but we cannot control it. We know death will arrive, but we cannot say when. We are aware of the inevitability of our end, and we live with that fear. But we are courageous, and so we keep living.

The world tells you to slow down, but also to keep up. It tells you to be quiet, but also to make noise. It tells you to dream big, but also stay grounded. It tells you to be happy, but also not to fear sadness. It tells you to plant roots, but also to explore. It tells you to be yourself, but also asks that you keep changing. It tells you that none of this is easy, and it’s right.

Because all of this is right, or at least, none of it is wrong. There is no advice that will diminish the confusion or frustration of what it means to live a life. No path is simple. No choice is easy. No person has every found the answers to these questions.

But every person since has continued to try. And what better name can we give that than courage? What is braver than continuing to search? What is more daring than hope?

What else is there to do in this moment than have the strength to simultaneously believe it is the last and the first of many more to come? How will you choose to spend it? What dreams will you have? What steps will you take? What love will you feel? How will you inspire others? What advice will you give?

What words will you write?

Into The Woods

Once, I crept down into the woods to sit beside the river. I stayed there for two days, writing and thinking and sleeping beneath the trees. I made room for myself in the world, or the world made room for me. Either way, I found a place to be by myself without feeling alone or lonely. Certainly, that’s something.

For forty-eight hours I sat and listened to life’s music. At night the wolves howled lullabies. The birds greeted each morning in song. All day the river babbled on. We spoke the same language, made up of different words.

One of the best things that I know for certain is that the world doesn’t need me to survive. It existed before me and it will outlast me. I am only a very small piece.

Not everything I create needs to be genius. In fact, only a very small portion of what I contribute to the world will be good, and an even smaller portion of that will ever be great. That doesn’t mean it can’t be meaningful. Perfection is overrated, and nonexistent.

And I am not here to be perfect. I am here to be alive. And sometimes living means making yourself so large that the rest of the world is forced to take notice. And sometimes living means making yourself so small that you can fade into the background, to watch, and to listen, and to become sublimely, painfully, acutely aware. Sometimes the most important thing you can do with your existence is to recognize that it is simultaneously significant and insignificant, and be liberated by that understanding.

I can draw parallels between myself and the river, but I know that I am not the river. I am not the song the birds sing each morning. I am not the lullabies the wolves howl at the moon. I am something else, which I’ve learned to call the self. It is large and it is small. It is important and it is almost nothing. It is the soft whispering of words. It is the grand symphony of language.

All of it is necessary in creating life’s music. Every note is meaningful. Every idea and thought and expression has purpose, if only to my own process of becoming.

And whatever I become, and continue to become, will be imperfect. It is not self-deprecation and it is not hopelessness. It is the understanding that a certain level of insatiability is necessary. To feel complete is a certain kind of death.

We are not always good. We are not always great. We can always do better. But don’t mistake that for sadness. Don’t use it as an excuse to give up. It is the best reason I know to keep trying. Certainly, that’s something.

We are amazing, because we stay hungry. We have an appetite for improvement. We keep hoping and striving for more. We believe in what we see, and hear, and know. And equally we believe in what we don’t see, and hear, and know. We put all of our trust in possibility. We put all of our love into life.

We can make ourselves so big and so small that we can change our place in the grand scheme of things. And we can see that the world depends on us, and also, that it doesn’t need us at all. We can see that we are all lonely little pieces who are never, ever alone. We can see how the world makes room for us while we figure out how to fit into it.

We can see what it means to creep down into the wild woods of the world and sit beside the babbling river of life. We can watch everything continue on with us and without us. We can feel happy and alive and free. We can be perfectly imperfect, like all of existence. We can stay like that for days.

And certainly, that’s something. In fact, it’s everything.

The Circle Game

For our last month of our senior year, undoubtedly certain we would have lost interest in classrooms, our high school had us intern at a place of our choosing. I decided to spend my month at a preschool, which seemed like a natural fit at the time, and makes even more sense now that it’s become my job.

It was my preschool, where I had spent my earliest years, and I loved – even then – the idea that my education had come full circle that way. I have always been a romantic. The poetic nature of time was not lost on me.

On the playground, I was the pusher of swings. I’d pull back and let go and watch little bodies lift higher and higher. “To the moon!” They would yell. We made up stories about the adventures they would have, about all they would see and do and experience when they got there. They were imaginative and hopeful in a way we tend to forget. There is so much we leave behind.

One afternoon, he went and sat on the tire swing. It was his favorite. He loved it more than anything, in the only way children know how to love.

I began to spin him around. “Faster! Faster!” He cried. And out of love, I obeyed. I pulled and pulled and pulled. And round and round and round he went. He giggled. He laughed. He shrieked. “Faster! Faster! Faster!”

And then he threw up.

All over himself, and all over the swing. I stopped it immediately and crouched down beside him, offering comfort and sympathy. “It’s okay, buddy,” I said. And he lifted his head, looked me straight in the eye, smiled, and said “again!”

That was nine years ago now. He’s in middle school and has most likely forgotten all about that day, and so many others. Time moves so fast.

But I’ll always remember that little smile. I’ll always remember what I might have forgotten too, had he not been there to remind me.

I’ll always remember what it feels like to love something so much it makes you sick. To love it so much that you’re willing to be sick over it, time and time again. To understand the scary consequences of your love, and love anyway. To love with that kind of wild, reckless hope.

As for me, I know nothing else but love – hopeful love, and scary love, and painful love, and happy love. I know that all feeling stems from and bends toward a type of love, that even sadness is a form of love. I know that we spin round and round and round in love. I know that the only way to participate in this world is lovingly.

I have always been a romantic. The poetic nature of time is never lost on me. It goes faster and faster and faster, and we are lucky just to hold on. Sometimes we fall off. Sometimes we get sick. Sometimes we are lifted as high as the moon, and sometimes we are knocked back down to earth. Adventures come and go. We leave things behind and we carry things with us. We remember and we forget. We learn and relearn, time and time again.

Everything moves in circles. We return to the past to make sense of the present in order to make room for the future. And then we start again. And we keep doing this, over and over, as the world spins round and round. We try to love the way we did as children, scared but reckless, in the wildest of hopes.

Universal Treasures

Every morning, I wake up greedy. I rise like a thief, stealing joy. I snatch laughter from the air in hungry handfuls. I stuff smiles into my pockets. I tuck love away in my sleeves.

I lift music from birds and breath from trees and sweet fragrances from flowers. I steal lines of poetry from conversations. I rob time of its heaviness.

I kidnap the child of my imagination and hold it for the ransom of innocent revelry. I demand my conditions of glee are met. I will accept nothing less than happiness.

My taking is maniacal. I am crazy about the world. I can never get enough of it.

Every morning, I fill the cup of my joy to the brim. Sometimes I get deliciously reckless and allow it to overflow. I drink bliss down to the last delightful drop. I carry its warmth inside of me all day. It runs through my veins. I am never cold.

Some days I get caught stealing moments of reflection. I’ll be staring off into the distance, following a thought back to its source, or further away from it. Someone will walk in my line of view. They won’t realize I’m looking out across the universe. They’ll smile at me and the stars will realign. I’ll see the planets inside of them move. And when I smile back, I’ll feel the universe unfolding inside of me too – powerful and everlasting.

We are aliens to each other, but we are all part of the same thing. We are composed of the same matter. We exist in the same pocket of the universe. We are here for the same reasons, whatever they may be. We can shine as bright as the cosmos. We can feel the depths of space.

Every morning, I open my eyes to a new world. The landscape may be the same, but I am always different. A little older, a little wiser, a little further from the beginning and closer to the end. I am not stuck in the universe. I am a piece of the universe. I am always moving and turning and changing. My horizons are forever expanding. I am never completely still.

And so I have to hold on to keep myself centered. I grasp tightly to love. I wrap my hands around smiles and laughter and joy. I fill the empty pockets of space with greedy delight. I take all that I can from each day.

And I keep it in the universe that exists inside of me. It shines from me like suns and moons. It warms me like bliss running through my veins.

Inside my body there are constellations that at times align perfectly with yours. Inside my world there are people and places and things that can never be stolen away. Inside my life there are moments more precious to me than the stars.

Inside my chest there is a heart, and inside that, there’s treasure.

Loss

Thousands of people in the world die every day, which is one good reason – but not the only one – to say “I love you.” It is painful to lose someone to death. It can be even more painful to lose them to life, to feel them slowly slipping away, to watch them fade into shadows.

One day you let go of my hand and got swept up in the crowd. I watched more and more people come between us. I reached out for you. I called out for you. But I couldn’t get through.

And then I lost you. You were lost. And I was lost. And we lost each other.

And I hated myself for not being able to find you. And I hated you for disappearing. And I hated that we could live in a world where it was so easy to lose someone. And I worried that I hadn’t said “I love you” enough.

I have been searching for you ever since, in the most painful and desperate of hopes. I have caught glimpses of you in strangers. I have seen so many faces that could be yours. Things could have been different. I should have held onto your hand tighter. I shouldn’t have let you let go.

Thousands of people in the world get lost every day, which is one good reason – but not the only one – to hold someone’s hand. I still have yours in mine. I cling to the memory of it as tightly as I should have held onto the real thing. It’s the only way I know how to tell you that I’m sorry.

And I am sorry. I’m sorry for you that you are lost. I’m sorry for me for losing you. I’m sorry that I didn’t do more to save you. I’m sorry that all my life I’ve stood and watched you drift further and further away, that I’ve let you disappear into the crowd, that I’ve allowed you to fade into shadows. I should have provided more light.

It hurts to wait. It hurts even more not to know what you’re waiting for, what you’re hoping for, if there will ever be an end to such undefined longing. It hurts most to wait when waiting is all you can do.

But I will wait for you. If I could tell you something, it would not be I’m sorry or even I love you, although both are true. It would be that I am still here, reaching out, calling for you. It would be that I haven’t stopped searching, or hoping, or feeling the weight of your hand in mine. I would tell you that there is a better life waiting for you, if only you would come back and find it.

I would tell you that thousands of people in the world die every day, which is one good reason – but not the only one – to keep living. I would beg you not to give up.

In The End

On the last day of earth, people rose early. There was so much work to be done. Phone calls were made. Important sentiments were expressed. A new record was set for daily kisses.

No one went into the office. All businesses were closed. All eyes and ears and arms stayed open.

Some remained inside, cleaning their homes, returning everything back to its proper place.

Some poured themselves into the streets, shouting and laughing and roaring with life.

Some stayed quiet, pensive, breathing in the end of sweetness.

Some held strangers.

Some held animals.

Some held objects.

Some held the hands of their loved ones, all day, waiting.

People relaxed into their grief and made room for acceptance. The birds sang wildly of every beautiful thing. The dogs howled madly at invisible moons. The grass continued to grow. It was the opposite of disappearing.

“Now” whispered the wind.

The earth trembled in anticipation. The trees waved goodbye. The oceans overflowed with sad and happy tears.

The waves crashed, echoing the sound of the world’s first expression.The earth circled back towards nothingness, like all living things.

People watched from windows, trapped inside the blaze of their own bodies. There were so few ways to speak. There was so much that needed to be said. The hours dwindled. The sun moved across the sky.

In the last moments of the last hour of the last day of earth, everyone gathered together to stand separately in a crowd. Every phone was silent. All electronics were turned off.

People spoke, but didn’t really speak.

People laughed, but didn’t really laugh.

People cried, but didn’t really cry.

People prayed, but didn’t really pray.

People clung to one another. They held millions of years in their arms. They remembered the world in reverse – day before day, moon before moon, all the way back to the beginning.