Is it worth these precious breaths?
This fight,
this blame,
this game?
Is it really so important?
People die
(people who are loved)
and still we take for granted
life.
And we fight,
and we blame
in this game.
It’s just a game,
just a bloody game.
Just
a bloody
game.
Oh, the stories we tell
to amuse
and destroy
ourselves.
When the moon is full
they will remember:
the wolf howls
into the shining night.
And so do they.
I ache
for it all.
It is a war.
It is a world wide
war
announcing
the differing languages
of intolerance.
There is no place
for darling
in desire.
The sweet perfection
of you
must die
to know the wild
ecstasy
of me.
Cross the bridges
of my body
with your wandering
lust
and I will meet you in the air.
I will meet you in the air.
I tend to think that the root of all war starts with the individual. More specifically, the constant fights (and wholehearted agreements) we have—umm, with ourselves— about how good or bad, or right or wrong we are in relation to something or someone else.
But what is this inner chatter going on about, when, given the vast, unlimited nature of the universe: everything just simply is?
Everything.
It just is because how could it be any other way? All humans play by different rules: from countries, to cultures, to homes. And like the trees and plants we see dotted all about the place…no one is any more right than the other. It is humanity that places labels upon x, that judges x, that separates ourselves from x.
In my opinion: labels, judgment, and separation…cause war. The small day to day wars of: ‘that’s not what I believe, or how I would behave’. And the big wars, the ones with the bombs. I think we can all collectively agree on one thing, at least: we have really got to do something about those.
The problem is that our ‘ judgments, boxes and boundaries’ also keep us safe and functioning healthily, and so there lies the mind-numbing ache of life. The absolute chaos that is the human condition. Absolute chaos. (Did I mention the chaos? It’s kind of a bit chaotic, wouldn’t you say?)
Awareness of self (and other), compassion, understanding, forgiveness and empathy feel like the answer, to me, but our survival instincts (fight, flight, freeze) are so deeply ingrained. How do we evolve healthily and sustainably without suppressing real and actual biological needs? In other words, how do we achieve collective peace without blowing ourselves up via the suppression of our emotional and primal needs? We need to be able to freely express ourselves, and yet how do we do this when we are still under the shadow of such dense societal judgment?
And, that, dear bloggy friends, is the question I’ve been mulling over for quite some time now. Awareness of self has brought a great deal of peace to my life and the life of my children that certainly wasn’t there before. Where once I growled like the wild tiger Mum scolding her naughty cubs, I now take a moment, connect with my empathy, and calmly guide the little muffins in a way that won’t completely scar them for life. Then I go for a run. A long, long run and consider the painfully obvious fact that I am human and sometimes I just really want to roar.
We really are so painfully human. We all grow, learn, break, and heal at different times in our lives, and sometimes even radical empathy is a struggle for the most empathic among us. Perhaps I’m overthinking it all, but I really do wonder if we ever will have the collective epiphany of all epiphanies.
How to achieve peace, whilst also being everything that we are.
Is it possible? I hope so, but honestly…I’m really not sure.
Beautiful little flower.
Her petals close upon the darkening sky
and she sleeps,
opening again to the morning sun.
Searing heat tortures her softness.
Storms tear at her fragile frame.
Yet she keeps waking, opening.
Closing, sleeping.
She does not fight the weather that takes her,
she gracefully lives.
She lives.
And how beautiful she seems
to me
when she just
is
through it all.
Let me be
the flame that burns
into your midnight dreams.
Let these embers spark
your long forgotten
desires.
Let you taste them again
within the deepest
darkest
corners
of your soul.
I’m down in the depths of me, today.
It feels like sadness, but it is far more powerful than that.
This beautiful sadness.
It is a sadness I long for, a sadness I crave.
It flows through my veins until there is nowhere left for it to go but out.
Onto this page.
Into new hearts— yours, his, hers, theirs.
I was always told this bliss only lives in happiness.
But this is not happiness.
This is an ache.
This is the most beautiful ache of all.
I remember how it feels to be kissed by the soul of another.
How deep and rare, to be touched like that.
