*stuff*

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.  ~Kenji Miyazawa


Don't you just want to track Kenji down right now...and slap him?

When I am going through *stuff* and I read quotes like that, I do. I know it's right. It resonates deeply enough in me to cause such a strong reaction. But still, I don't like it so much. The middle child Capricorn in me wants to tell him to shut the fuck up.

I have lots of mates going through really hard *stuff* right now. *Stuff* that makes my heart ache for them because I know what its like. I might not be going through such hard *stuff* right this second in my life, but the experience of going through hard *stuff* is still close enough that I can feel it when someone else is going through it.

I want to help them fix it and I know I can't.

I want to just make them laugh...and so that's what I know I can do. Anything to help lighten the load of the *stuff* , even for just a second.

I do believe that its how we go through our *stuff* that determines or shapes who we be in the world. We all have people that we know (or have known) that have become angry and bitter souls because of their *stuff*. Or we see them on the street, or driving a car, or in line at a store...you can see it scarred onto their face like a trophy they like to carry around.

It seems like such a sad waste, but I get that it's their journey.

Many times over I have pondered on the realization that fire can help create purity. Can help us find the things that really matter, the things that define us and take us one step closer to the real us.

Do I want to hang out in the fire all the time?

Hell no!!!

But I get it. I see it. I feel it.

I feel the heat of my friends fires and they touch the scars left from my own and make me wince for a minute.....and then I try to help create a space that they can sit in to heal from their burns, or a space that they can rage in the fire, if need be. We all go through the fire alone....we may have people on the sidelines with buckets of water, salve, air, or a good strong cocktail..but, we go through it alone. At night, in the morning, when other people are sleeping, as we work, as we play, as we create...we move through our fire.

When the Japanese mend broken things they fill the cracks with gold because they believe when something has been damaged and has history, that it becomes even more beautiful. Not less. The metal is put through the fire to become pure, to become liquid and poured into the lines to connect side a to side b and then put back on display. I imagine in my head that it's put on an even bigger pedestal than it was on before.

I see my own lines of gold, my own filled in crack lines, my own scars and chips. I can run my fingers across them and appreciate the amazing beauty that they bring to me and to my life, I can also still feel and appreciate how they were created....and I know that they are there because of the fire.

I can appreciate them now.

Not so much at the time, but now.

On the inside of my right arm I have the words 'this, too, will pass'. That is the one guarantee we have in this life...everything will pass.

Sometimes, I hang onto those words with both hands, repeating them as a mantra to my rocking self. Other times, it serves as a reminder that this is it.

Here.
Now.

To be present. To feel the fire. To choose to walk through it knowing that you will come out the other side...different, but alive. 

So, how are you feeling right this second?

Right Here?

Right Now?