I am happy to listen to my shame, but I don’t accept its theories about who I am. I won’t live in the house shame built for me.

I have a different story. It says I’m a spark of the divine fire, a creator, a decider. I belong here, and my gifts are unique, and we’re all in this together.

How about you? What’s your story?

Alas, it was out of season. No figs. “Damn you, tree!” he said. “You suck!” He kept walking, and the tree withered.

“Uh, Jesus? Dood. You just killed that tree.”

“Aw, shit,” Jesus said. He paused.

“Guys,” he said, “see, this is what exactly what I’ve been telling you. You are fucking *powerful*. Be careful what you do with it.”

The first reason is that I don’t want to think in terms of “fixing” myself.

I’m a glorious holy mess, created in the image of God***, and that’s ok with me. I am a mistake-maker, a desirer of truth, beauty, joy… how could I improve on that? I do want to change things about my life, but I don’t want to change me.

*** this, my friends, can be seen as a metaphor. Atheists, please don’t get your panties in a wad. Created in the image of God, to me, means I’m a creator, and I’m drawn to the treasures: truth, beauty, love.

It seems like resolutions are about “I could suck less if only I…” & they’re a way of addressing shame that we carry around all the time. If i think of myself as lazy (and therefore bad), or disorganized (and therefore bad), or fat (and therefore bad), then this NY resolution thing is an opportunity to stop hating myself so much.

I’m all for addressing shame, but I think I have better strategies. I want to be present in my life all the time. (If shame is coming up, I want to address it in the moment, not once a year.) I want to be asking questions, changing how I approach things that aren’t working. If I see myself as lazy, I want to ask what’s that about? There is something I’m doing (or not doing) that I then respond to by calling myself lazy. What do I get out of doing (not doing) this thing? There’s something important in there, or I wouldn’t be doing it.

So I look at what I need as a human being that I’m trying to get by doing/not-doing this thing, and then I say, ah yes, that’s important! Maybe it’s relaxation (I’m tired), ease (from pressure to accomplish, or habitual guilt), joy (because I haven’t learned to enjoy doing dishes)… etc. These are all beautiful things.

Yet I notice that I enjoy a clean kitchen, too. How can I have all those beautiful things and also the nice experience of a clean kitchen?

The second reason I don’t make ‘resolutions’ is that I don’t make commitments or promises at all. I make intentions, but a promise is like a threat for the future, and I don’t want to live under threats. Like I’m telling myself, as of the moment I make the promise: “Now you’ll do it because you *have* to, or you’ll be bad/wrong/etc.” I want to get better at finding the loving thing in every moment. I don’t want my moments full of something I decided months ago would be a good idea. I want to stay flexible and listen to what’s happening.

It really doesn’t mean I don’t form intentions and stick with things. It just means I don’t create coercive stories and then do stuff from the coercion. I do what I’ve led someone to expect me to do because of all the wonderful results of that predictability, not because I “promised.”

I’m all for noticing things and adapting. I just want to do it way way more often than once a year. I want to choose love in every moment. That’s no small thing, and I screw it up all the time. But looking back on a whole year and then demanding that I try harder doesn’t seem like the path to more love & less fear.

One of my favorite teachers is a big fan of resolutions. Are you? How do they make your life better?

Even after all this time
The sun never says to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.

You may not know this about me, but… my life has been rough. I don’t mean I’m a victim. I mean I’ve been unhappy. Like 20-years-on-Prozac unhappy. (And other meds too.) I sought peace, not as a researcher, like this woman, but as a desperate human being. It was very literally a matter of life and death.

Now, I live in a state of joy. That doesn’t mean nothing ever bugs me, but it does mean that I know who I am and that it’s ok for me to live in this world. I know how to love and be loved. This is no small thing.

Brene Brown did a bunch of research to find out what “wholehearted” people are like. The first thing she discovered is that they believe they are worthy. I remember discovering this. I looked around at the people who weren’t living the kind of horrific life I was living. To my shock, near as I could tell, they weren’t actually “better” than me. They were messy people like me, but they didn’t decide from this that they didn’t deserve to exist. They lived without (so much) shame, and I lived in deep shame. I thought “what if I just believe that it’s ok for me to be here?”

It changed everything.

But you know what? I’m going on and on here, and that’s not my intent. I want to tell you that the reason the video dropped my jaw was that I am stunned that she managed to talk about these hard, shocking lessons, in one little twenty minute talk. I’ve been trying to figure out how to talk about them for years.

I guess that’s what TED talks are all about. She’s maybe condensed the most important ideas in the world into twenty minutes. Here. Take a look.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. — Rumi

If you haven’t read part 1, it can be found here. I recommend it. In it, I said part 2 would be about how “it’s possible to be (to be honest with fondness & without judgment), and about screwing up, dealing with anger & frustration, [and] how we improve if we’re already doing our best.” Here goes nothin’…

What I hear in “doing their best”

I’ve tried to describe some of the ways people have said they hear the RPD. Now I’d like to talk about what I hear in it (on a good day).

There is one principle that underlies all the connections I have with people, and it’s this:

Everyone I meet has the same human longings that I have, and all of their actions are attempts to reach for those treasures.

(If you’re familiar with the work of Rosenberg and NVC, you may have encountered these as “universal human needs.”)

Distinguishing between treasures (or needs) and the strategies we use to reach for them has turned out to be an invaluable skill for me. Practice in that means that when someone does something I am tempted to judge, I can look deeper, often with their help, and discover what they’re going for. And it always turns out to be something I care about too. Then I can say, hey, that strategy you picked? I’m not liking it, because of these other treasures I’m going for. How about we look for one that works for both of us?

So, I don’t mean they’re somehow operating at some rare (or impossible) peak, and more importantly, I am not saying that everything they did was geared toward getting my agenda taken care of. I only know how to act on my own agenda, and I prefer to see other people that way, too. So given all the things they care about, they did the best they could to get what they wanted. I can see them as a person like me, who has a life that includes love & fear, drive & exhaustion, clarity & confusion, just like me.

Let’s talk about a screwup.

I don’t mean a person who’s a screwup. I mean an action we see as a screwup. “Tuesday afternoon, Amala broke the build and then went home for the day.”

DOOD! That is not ok

If Amala left in an ambulance, would that be “ok”? So, it’s not quite true that you would never do such a thing, right? No matter what happened, Amala was doing the best she could to manage all of what it means to be Amala. This isn’t just important to warm fuzzies and empathy. It’s vital to being able to change things.

Being able to look at how things actually are is a very basic requirement for making intelligent changes. We observe and adapt. And if you’re in judgment, you can’t see what’s happening with Amala that she would do this thing. That she would “screw up”.

• Maybe she hasn’t had a pair all week, despite saying repeatedly that she’s over her head and she can’t manage this.
• Maybe her father is at home, living out his last few weeks on this earth.
• Maybe she just made a rare mistake, and it’s almost certain to not happen again.

Or, and this is important:

Maybe she didn’t consider anyone’s needs but her own. Maybe she was careless.

Ok, here we get down to the nitty. Yes?

The thing is that if you are meeting her with honesty, empathy, and fondness, the way Rogers recommends (see earlier post), this isn’t much different than any other reason. You can start on your root cause analysis with love & openness, and you’ll discover way more than if you “let her know that’s unacceptable” or “hold her accountable.”

Yes, I did suggest you not “hold her accountable.”

Please notice that I first said you are meeting her with honesty, empathy, and fondness. The first one is honesty. I am not suggesting we gloss over things. I am suggesting we talk about what we observe, and how we see it changing things.

So, what instead? How about root cause analysis? We can’t know the reasons for sure, but we can do our best to figure out what’s going on. Here’s one possible outcome:

1. Why did she not consider anyone’s needs but her own? (Because she doesn’t care anymore.)
2. Why doesn’t she care anymore? (Maybe she’s been asking for support, and doesn’t think she’s getting any.)
3. Why doesn’t she think she’s getting any? (Because she doesn’t see us trying really hard to provide support.)
4. Why doesn’t she see what we offer as “support”? (Because she has coping issues stemming from an earlier violent personal relationship.)
5. Why does she continue to have coping problems? (Because she keeps refusing to get help.)

This is a rough one. And it’s rough for a reason. I do not want to make this about being “nice” or giving up your boundaries or standards. I want it to be about stopping getting in our own way by taking the easy, judgmental route, when the other way is more connecting, interesting, and way more productive.

So what do we do with Amala now?

The beautiful thing is that we have lots of options at this point. We can offer to help address the problem, if we think that’s a good idea. We can investigate further, if we think the relationship is worth it. We can also decide we aren’t wanting to collaborate with Amala any more. We can do that while holding her with honesty, empathy, and fondness.

If we’re gonna respect people as people, and recognize all these relationships as voluntary, we can start with taking the threat out of firing. At any time, she can decide she doesn’t want to work with us, and we can decide we don’t want to work with her. But that isn’t something we have to use as an ax over someone’s head. We have all sorts of options when we’re looking at the real situation.

I’m not going to promise a part three, but if I did, it would be about how to get past the shame people have. Even when we aren’t judging them, they’re judging themselves, and that gets in the way, too. Maybe I’ll take that one to MyAgileEducation.com.

]]> http://angelaharms.com/2010/retrospectives-blame-and-the-prime-directive-part-2/feed/ 5 http://angelaharms.com/2010/retrospectives-blame-and-the-prime-directive-part-1/ http://angelaharms.com/2010/retrospectives-blame-and-the-prime-directive-part-1/#comments Mon, 13 Dec 2010 00:43:46 +0000 Angela http://angelaharms.com/?p=724

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there. — Rumi

When I first ran across the Retrospective Prime Directive, I was excited. It gave me hope that there were folks who’d found a way to do business without relying on blame. In my experience, blame gets in the way of creativity, of learning and growing, so I’m delighted to discover people who, like me, want to build a productive work life without it.

In case you aren’t familiar, the RPD is intended to create a safe space for a retrospective, where we look at the past to decide how we can best move forward. It goes like this:

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

I’m noticing, though, that the phrase “did the best job they could” gets under some people’s skin. If I look at it just right, it gets under mine, too. What does it mean to “believe” that? If everyone’s doing their best all the time, what does that mean? There’s no not-best to compare it with, right?

The best they could?

Esther Derby’s post, Are You Doing Your Best? talks about the ways we can see someone as doing the best they could given the circumstances. She covers circumstances that we might overlook (like whether they have an ergonomic chair). Remembering those things can help me stay out of a mental blame-space, but they don’t cover all the problems with “the best.”

One person may think the phrase means that everyone’s always at their peak (which can’t be true). Another says this talk of “doing their best” is naive and insulting. Someone else points out that they know they don’t always do their best, so why would they assume other people do?

A coach writes that she doesn’t actually believe that folks aren’t to blame, but she agrees to suspend disbelief, or pretend, for the purposes of retrospection. Lastly, someone told me that what the RPD means is that this is not an occasion for blaming or judging. We set those things aside for now.

But there’s a problem with the pretending idea. People know when you’re pretending.

Why does the prime directive and our assumptions about people matter?

The psychologist Carl Rogers described three things someone needs from another person in order to experience growth. First, they need their coach (that is, the person in the helping role) to be real with them, congruent, not covering up what they are experiencing. Second, they need empathy from that person. That is, they need to be seen, heard, and understood. And finally, they need something Rogers called unconditional positive regard.

That last is a doozy. What it means is that your influence over someone, your ability to help them develop, depends on your liking them. Or, as the Arbinger Institute puts it:

“… no matter what we’re doing on the outside, people respond primarily to how we’re feeling about them on the inside.”

It may seem impossible to meet all of Rogers’ criteria. To be completely honest, to see and hear a person’s experience, and to still see them in a positive light might seem to be more than any human can accomplish. I don’t believe it is. In fact, in my experience, it’s possible to be completely honest about what happened (including noticing who caused what, and how) without blame or judgment, and to move forward with solutions that work.

Part 2 is about how that’s possible, and about screwing up, dealing with anger & frustration, how we improve if we’re already doing our best. Oh, and also unconditional love. (Stay tuned.)

]]> http://angelaharms.com/2010/retrospectives-blame-and-the-prime-directive-part-1/feed/ 14 http://angelaharms.com/2010/why-i-dont-make-money/ http://angelaharms.com/2010/why-i-dont-make-money/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:45:34 +0000 Angela http://blog.angelaharms.com/?p=580 Last night at a meeting, somebody asked me why I don’t make money. There are a lot of reasons, but lately the reason I don’t make money is this: I am a full-time student. Not at a university (though Ohio State says they’ll hand over my Philosophy degree if I take three non-Philosophy classes so I can be worldly). I’m a full-time student of compassion (truth/love/beauty). That means choosing to live in this moment, for real, and to follow the love wherever it leads.

In the past, I’ve been a freelancer, a diy entrepreneur. I’ve also been something of an individualist, apparently from a really early age. I was pretty happy about that for a long time, but now collaboration seems just so interesting! I don’t want to DIY anymore. I don’t want to hang out a shingle offering what I’m good-enough at to people who find me refreshing and affordable. Though I did enjoy integrating compassion into the way I do business.

But these days, collaboration seems to be the central lesson in my compassion curriculum. I thought I knew a little about it, but I was full of crap. I’ve been fighting this lesson for months, I think. But now, I’m just enthralled with the topic.

Getting a job

I remember saying to a supervisor-type once, “It’s not supposed to be this way. I don’t want to do this.” He said “You have no choice.” Not the right things to say to motivate me. :) I won’t tell you my reply, but I didn’t work there much — any, actually — longer.

I have adopted some practices I haven’t figured how to fit into “job” life. I don’t wear heels, and I always tell the truth. The heels, I could probably get around, but the always telling the truth could be a problem.

I don’t mean the kind of “truth” that’s made up of generated judgments about things being awesome / ugly / wrong / right / fat / stoopid… those ideas can be discussed, debated, and improved on as part of collaboration, but they’re just ideas. Truth is what I experience… joy, fear, affection, annoyance, sorrow, excitement… things like that. I generally don’t smile when I’m sad or nod when my gut is in knots. I say “Wow. My gut is in knots.” At least that’s the intention.

Follow the love.

I started on this path (as a student of compassion) because I have a really low tolerance for pain. I’m a crazy person, and there was a time I could only survive with antidepressants. I’m judgmental, scared and needy. But because I have such a low tolerance for those things, I’ve had to learn nonjudgment, grace, and interdependence.

Now I am beginning to get those things, and getting them saves my butt often enough, but I’m still the same person, prone to fall into fear, oblivious to the rope of love that I could grab if I could only see it.

If I stray from this path, try to put on a brave face, write a resume that cleverly highlights my strengths while hiding my weaknesses, I am guessing the result wouldn’t be pretty.

Collaboration.

Oh, but collaboration! I’m developing a real craving for it. That’s ok, though. If I sit with the craving and don’t pursue it with clinging-attention, it will come. And it will come clean, without need for heels, or a cleverly crafted resume, or smiling when I’m scared.

]]> http://angelaharms.com/2010/why-i-dont-make-money/feed/ 3 http://angelaharms.com/2010/a-personal-rant/ http://angelaharms.com/2010/a-personal-rant/#comments Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:24:48 +0000 Angela http://blog.angelaharms.com/?p=567 I just figured something out. And wow.

So Radical Love Project isn’t filling my time or my life, lately. Well, it kind of is, in that I haven’t stopped with the crazy pursuit of love. But since we moved to Columbus, that path is fuzzy. It’s taking a long time to feel like we have any sort of home at all. Life goes on… Tracy’s found his place, and I’m feeling around for some footing.

I wrote this birthday post for my 45th, and have been feeling like I am ready to step into life in a way that I haven’t known how in the past. But what does that look like?

Hi, I’m Angela, and I’m a compulsive entrepreneur.

I’m a starter of things. I’m one of those people who is always up to something, always has an idea brewing. Which has its joys and its blips, of course. But it’s me.

My freelance writing and editing business has been satisfying, but I’ve been pulling away from it for a while now. The time I spent in ministry in Eugene was a beautiful distraction, and I think if we were still there, I wouldn’t be wondering what’s next. That felt like exactly the right thing to be doing. Or rather, what’s next would have involved some things that were intimately connected with what we were already doing. Which is how I like to flow.

But now we’re uprooted, and I’m wondering. I think I might like to go back to school. I think there are ways in which I like the idea of bringing love to business, believe it or not.

Measuring outcomes

But see, I’ve been on this intense spiritual path (in order to find a way to survive in this life). I’ve given up a lot of things, like clinging to attachment to security, like a sense that I deserve (or don’t deserve) anything, like my conviction that I have no right to exist, that I’m in the way. Another thing I’ve given up is the measuring of outcomes.

I love this post a friend (who does ministry work similar to RLP) wrote about measuring outcomes. It says what I mean perfectly.

And yet, I’ve watched his ministry grow (with difficulty) and seen him struggle with those questions over and over. His days are caught up in things that “have to” get done. He’s got bank accounts and an official 501(c)3 designation. Someone withdrew support recently because he doesn’t preach that God sends people to Hell after they die. (And this is related, because he’s not working to “save souls” in his ministry, but to love people. This means no outcomes in the form of “souls saved” per year.)

The contacts we made in what we came to call the Radical Love Project, on the other hand, were always personal. When I bought food to share, I couldn’t bring myself to separate its cost from our grocery cost. I didn’t want to know how much we were spending per person, per week.

More outcomes measuring I don’t do…

• Unschooling the kids. They aren’t a means to any end. They’re people, and I want to love them as they blossom. They do state mandated assessments, but we don’t prepare for them or put any attention to them. (I suppose we would if we ever had trouble with them.)
• Loving my friends who live under a bridge. I don’t ask them to change, but I hang out with them, listen to them, support them when they want to change.
• Work life. I really reach for doing what I love, and encourage my partner to do the same. Trust that energy flows, and we’ll have what we need. And we do.

And yet, I know that…

Outcomes are life.

The temptation is always there. And by temptation, I mean the realization that we might not have grocery money if someone does what they think is right instead of what will appease the boss. Or that somebody might try to force our kids to go to school if we don’t give them the papers they want. Outcomes like these, or like having a running car, even getting approval from people, are tempting.

But I don’t like measuring outcomes with people. Which brings me to what I’m doing with the (probably) upcoming decades.

Counseling, coaching, ministry.

There are a lot of things I’ve always wanted to be. An architect, an astrophysicist. (Oddly, I never wanted to be a philosopher very badly. Might explain why I walked away from that Philosophy degree with such aplomb.) But my whole life — what I actually am — points to this one thing. (Or three things. Whatever.)

And I can’t seem to do it. I realize this is an oppositional whine, but stuck is where I am, so I might as well give voice to it.

• Counseling. Where do I start? I want to love people and walk with them through their pain, and help them emerge. So I join a system that requires that I medicalize, that I “apply effective evidence-based treatments” and get them out of therapy as quickly as possible? Did I fall into a different universe where Carl Rogers never existed?
• Coaching. So, so tired of DIY. Tired of being an entrepreneur. Tired. I so don’t want to hang out a shingle. Don’t want to build a beautiful seo website. Don’t want to sell.
• Ministry. DIY ministry was lovely. I think my DIY is just broken these days. But other than DIY, ministry is not in reach. Why? Where do I start? Can’t be in a denomination. Zen isn’t enough; Christ is important to me. Yet I can’t really get into Christian mythology. Ministry involves creating a profitable institution, even though that’s not how it’s described. Money in – salary – other costs > 0. If I wanted that, I’d start a business. Aren’t I hard to please? Sheesh.

You know what? I think my opposition centers around one thing. I have this idea that I don’t have to compromise. That I can just embody love. And that things that feel yucky are in the way of that.

I wonder what I want to do with that idea?

Buck up and deal.

No, I don’t want to do that. I spent years trying to do that, and it didn’t work. It created a scared, neurotic young woman, and wasn’t even successful by most any standards. Besides, I really do love this inner compass I was born with, and I want to pay attention to it. If something is revolting, I want to notice that, and not try to plow through the revulsion. And right now, counseling, coaching and ministry are all, in a way, revolting.

I warned you this was a rant. A weird, meandering rant. (Wonder if I will click “publish”?)

Times like this, if I’m lucky, I remember that I have what I need inside myself to figure this out. So… back to the cushion.

]]> http://angelaharms.com/2010/a-personal-rant/feed/ 0 http://angelaharms.com/2010/mystical-experience-according-to-sting/ http://angelaharms.com/2010/mystical-experience-according-to-sting/#comments Thu, 27 May 2010 20:40:59 +0000 Angela http://blog.angelaharms.com/?p=508 In the 80s, when “Message in a Bottle” and “Roxane” were on the radio, I wasn’t really listening. I didn’t know Sting from Adam from Gordon Sumner.

But now I’m reading his memoir, Broken Music. How that happened is this: I was looking up version of “People Get Ready”, and I found one that Sting sung with Jeff Beck on guitar. it was a weird performance… I wondered if Sting was upset or drunk or something. But one thing really stood out. Where all the other singers I’d heard said (regarding the “train to Jordan”, something to this affect,

There ain’t no room for the hopeless sinner
who would hurt all mankind, just to save his own…
Have pity on those
whose chances grow thinner…

… Sting sang instead,

There’s even room for the hopeless sinner
who would hurt all mankind, just to save his own.
Have pity on me…

I searched (and searched, and searched) and haven’t yet found any other version sung that way.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Sting, since I heard him interviewed on NPR way back when Dream of the Blue Turtles came out. Terri Gross, I think, asked about “Every Breath You Take,” and he said folks write to say how the love it, and they play it at their weddings. He said he thought the song was creepy, and, of folks who played it at their wedding, he laughed and said, “Good luck with that.” I loved him a little bit right then.

Anyway, so this led me to his memoir. I was curious. I’m about 80% through it, and, though I’m enjoying the whole thing, there was one part right in the beginning that really got me.

It’s where he talks about his first (only?) mystical experience. His happened under the influence of an “ancient medicine,” in a jungle in Brazil, but it’s clearly recognizable as the sort of mystical experience that other folks report. And it’s remarkably similar to experiences I’ve had, albeit without the help of any ancient medicines.

I love the way he wrote about it.

Yet when we walk outside into the cool of the evening, the jungle is vibrantly alive, in fact disarmingly alive, and I have never felt so consciously connected before. I may be out of my gourd, but I seem to be perceiving the world on a molecular level, where the normal barriers that separate “me” from everything else have been removed, as if every leaf, every blade of grass, every nodding flower is reaching out, every insect calling to me, every star in the clear sky sending a direct beam of light to the top of my head.

This sensation of connectedness is overwhelming. It’s like floating in a bouyant limitless ocean of feeling that I can’t really begin to describe unless I invoke the word love.

Heh. If you know me at all, I’m sure you know how giddy I was at that point.

Before this experience I would have used the word to separate what I love from everything I don’t love—us not them, heroes from villians, friend from foe, everything in life separated and distinct like walled cities or hilltop fortresses jealously guarding their hoard of separateness. Now all is swamped in this tidal wave of energy which grounds the skies to the earth so that every particle of matter in and around me is vibrant with significance. Everything around me seems in a state of grace and eternal. And strangest of all is that such grandiose philosophizing seems perfectly appropriate in this context, as if the spectacular visions have opened a doorway to another world of frankly cosmic possibilities.

Wow. Isn’t that lovely? I was rivited. And then he talked about the implications he sees in that, and that last sentence, the very last one, really, really threw me.

I have to sit down on the steps of the church in dumbstruck awe at the beauty of the jungle and the stars above my head, but it is almost too much to bear. I lower my eyes to see a small gap in the stone steps, and there in the darkness, six inches down, at the bottom of the narrow crevice formed by the rough slabs of granite, grows an exquisite purple flower. It is like a forget-me-not, five petals of magenta radiating from the central mandala of a five-pointed yellow star, reaching bravely toward the light with an extraordinary life force and I am the sole witness to the courage of its struggle. In this moment I am led to an understanding that not only must such tiny, beautiful, and delicate living things be charged with love, but also the inanimate stones that surround them, everything giving and receiving, reflecting and absorbing, resisting and yielding, and I realize perhaps for the first time that love is never wasted. Love can be denied or ignored, or even perverted, but it does not disappear, it merely takes another form, until we are consciously ready to accept its mystery and its power. This may take a moment or an eternity, and there can be no insignificancies in eternity. And if this is true, then I must continue to remember my story and attempt to make some sense of it, to try to remake the drab prose of my life into some kind of transcendent poetry.

I have always had a sort of existential angst that I don’t know how to explain. Whenever I’ve thought there might be “no purpose” to life, or that the universe is a bunch of rocks that happened to spark life, but will just go back to nothing… well, that route it suicide for me. Literally, kinda. I have diagnoses to prove it.

And I had been thinking about this more lately (again). Trying to remember what I hold on to in order not to lose hope. And then I read this. It was one of several messages I got over as many days, but definitely one of the juicier ones.

And if this is true, then I must continue to remember my story and attempt to make some sense of it, to try to remake the drab prose of my life into some kind of transcendent poetry.

And, by the way, I’m still looking for anybody else who sings the love-grace-version of “People Get Ready.”

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