To all those who have crossed my path or have been burnt by the
light of my deep capacity to love, line up. They are bandaged, or angry,
disgruntled or forlorn. Into the great grey mist of the love -lost they go.
I wear my too-big heart now, like a badge of honor, and few are
brave enough to truly take it in. I speak not only of romantic love, but also
of friendships that were built on my loyalty and familial commitment to those I’ve
let into my heart.
A precarious vulnerability, such passion does make. I am not defending
myself. I merely stand here now, unapologetic. You can find me ablaze or
snuffed out to frailty. That which confines me to another person’s
opinion is neither my business, nor am I interested in its contents.
I, a daydreamer have thrown colors to emotions or smell to thoughts,
I am not bound by the limitations that preclude my peers from seeing all of
life’s beauty with a gaze of awe—a child’s ruddiness in
equal parts separated by perfectly pink lips; a couple nervously hand-in-hand
by the departure terminal, unsure how to express in words what their separation
from each other will require them to endure; the steamy, thin fog dancing into
the dawn’s light over grass and quiet lake in the gloaming hour that
beckons the old woman on the bench to recount her lost lovers, her long-standing
shroud, and the eruption of fury she has never allowed to smolder and spit.
You may see frivolous or furtive love in my words, which may elicit
a cringe or a detected rise in your temperature. You may find the outlandish in
my outward openness.
What if I were to offer an alternate perception that my limitless
capacity to love is not an encumbrance. Instead, what if that which sets my
skin abuzz is coming from the same force that raises my children with true and layered compassion and empathy? Could my ability to throw tendrils out to the
breathing and expanding landscape of all feelings possibly be a favorable trait
that fills in all the holes and fissures left by the lame, tame, and the
reserved souls.
A whole life lived is free from repression. It is accepting of
the very core of all of us at the endings—endings of life, relationships, and journeys?
Why only then do you allow your emotions to be free. Is it not strange that
only in grief we sense our most sharpened sense of living? In the pain of loss,
we engage in the undeniable presence of our beings. So I say to the lamenting
woman on the bench, “Go now, keep your life your own, in full immersion of all
that you wanted and still want for, bury nothing, love now, and acknowledge its
beauty, say thank you to those who forced you to push it down, because in that
stifling came, not the static soul but the soaring one.”
Do I lean into the dramatic? No, I trust-fall into the depths of
it, arms-outstretched, eyes closed. Is
your version of life better or worse than mine? It is not. My being this way is
it’s
own shield. Few penetrate, even less return it in likeness, and so I channel
the power of such propensity to feel and heal with gratitude.
I love your way for being different, and distinguishing itself
from my own. All true gratitude comes from the bedrock of love, even if only a
thin layer; its undercurrent flows inside.
I don’t expect yours to be as open a
consideration, and with full understanding. I allow your judgements of
something that seems nonsensical. In all that I’ve said, I hope
some breadth of love’s gracious kindness permeated the
screen. I hope on some day, not too far out from today, you can envision that
gratitude is love, that love is gratitude, and it wants nothing in return
except to soothe your hearts.
Maybe now, or in a different time on terms of your own, you will
see that all that you have is already within you, always will be, always has
been, and from that very lovely thought:
You have a million reasons
to feel gratitude. Gratitude forms the emotion of love. That is the very deep
belief from which I have returned and have found is the ample bounty of all
that we can and will be. It stems from love. Love brings on gratitude, and
gratitude creates the light that leads to a joyous heart.
From the sophisticated words of Kelly Clarkson, and in their
refinement a simple truth revealed: “This is my heart beat song, and I’m
gonna sing it.”
(C’mon, that’s funny. Lulu out.)
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