Teaching
Last week someone said, “You act like you love us.”
I assure you, I am not acting. I love you. Not ALL of you (there are some assholes, and I doubt they’re reading this), but anyone who feels my love is feeling it because it’s there. Because I value your journey and know that if you have arrived here, hell-bent on getting better, asking questions that make me work harder to master my own questions, you will get better–we both will. I told someone wonderful last week, and again today (perhaps you are here reading this), “You’re going to be okay.” I said it without a hint of doubt. In fact I had no doubt. Have no doubt. If you want to get better, you will. It won’t be tomorrow. And it won’t be without some slipping and some darkness. but it will come. I am proud to know you, am terrified of this brief responsibility I have, am grateful for what I am learning about the capacity of the human heart through watching yours expand and heal itself.
I don’t love because it’s my job. Nowhere in my job description does it say to love anyone. I love because even in your darkness, your light shines through. Even when you can’t see it. So read the poem below. Write “Try to praise the mutilated world” then write “Remember…” do it again and again. Remember that there was a time when you felt light, when you saw beauty and witnessed evidence of the capacity of people to be good, to do good. Know that you yourself are someone’s evidence of beauty.
