The Heart of the Matter

How are you?

Life is often hard. It’s an immutable truth that we all know in our bodies, minds, and spirits. It’s easy to try and ignore this fact and place the blame for suffering at our own door. And while we all cause ourselves unnecessary pain on occasion, we should be kind and try to remember that this is a difficult moment in the human story.

The signal-to-noise ratio, in terms of those telling us how they thrive and strive, use this or that training/hack/action, has become a sound that is so loud on social media it’s like a jet engine with the throttle fully engaged. Relentless sounds of inauthentic success. Paper-thin illusions presented to the masses, as a performative act. The call to be seen, for the sake of it.

Imagine that sound as a frequency. It is there, always, changing in tempo and pulse. Calling us and repelling us in the same moment.

The collective noise of the human condition hides a great deal of sadness and unspoken words.

And it can appear that we are continually stuck in a cycle of trying to convince ourselves that we are OK. And that we are all right.

We are not.

It is impossible to be OK all of the time. Even within 24 hours, we can experience highs and lows that are sublime. We try to convince ourselves that we have the solution. When perhaps the illusion of a solution is the problem.

And just maybe that has been the problem all along.

We are born to experience our lives. Our story. It will be a story that rises and falls. It will have exciting moments. It will have painful surprises. It will have joy and love. And pain and anger and grief.

And this symptomatic age often tries to convince us that we don’t know best. That we must ignore the truth that we are each gifted, even before we arrive in the world.

What we should offer ourselves on a regular basis is permission to stop.

To take a moment to listen to what our heart is telling us. And time to consider our next steps. Maybe we need a hot bath, an early night, a new job, or a few hours alone. I am sure you know what you need right now, even as you read these words.

There is no perfect right way. There is only your way.

We are all trying to be someone. When in fact, the only person we should become is ourselves. And that takes a lifetime. And maybe, just maybe, we won’t perfect all elements of the story we felt called to tell. And that is OK too.

What we can do in this moment is offer ourselves permission to listen to our hearts speak the sacred truth.

And then we should be kind to ourselves. And ensure we are not brutalising those same hearts. And in time, we will again have the capacity to be kind to all living things we encounter. For the essence we each hold within is divine and a fragment of the truth of the story that is attempting to be told.

We can only do what we can do. Take it slow. Together we will arrive. The story is not over until it is over. If we see another sunrise, another day, we still have a chance to tell our tale.