why are we so mean to each other? why has politics become about how much we know & not how we treat each other? why do we mistake hurting other people as healing ourselves? why do we use big theory to disguise simple emotions? why has loving become synonymous with assimilating? what would it mean to sit with our sensitivity? to hold our tenderness? what would it mean to move from a place of need, rather than self-reliance? what would it mean to not just say “we need to talk about mental health,” but actually act on it? what would it mean to acknowledge that everyone is navigating trauma, loss, anxiety, & depression? so many of the people i am & so many of the people i love are struggling. i don’t want to bring them down further, make them feel like they aren’t enough. i want celebration, affirmation, care, delicacy, respect! it’s not just that i want gentleness, i need it. every day of my life i have people go out of their way to insult me, attack me, & degrade me. i know first hand what that does to your spirit & your body — something in you dies. there are multiple deaths in living. we are so callous with one another in our grieving of them. what would it mean to engage differently with one another? to say the world we want is not just in our minds, it is here right now in the way we relate to one another. this is why i practice affirmation — i heal from uplifting other people. i am enriched by your becoming. your spiritual glow up enlivens mine. increasingly i am drawn to the naive, the idealistic, the parts i have been told are “immature.” it is here in these places that i am finding the answers. what would it mean to recognize that we have the potential to love everyone in the world? what would it mean to recognize that everyone is capable of transformation? what would it mean to do something else from what we have been taught? do we dare? x

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