What do we say of the ache we’re gifted, what words to sing the praises of the sorrows that sneak into our days, that saturate our hours from time to time? What should we say here, here in this place between joy and despair, how should we look back on the low points, the troughs that give the peaks their majesty? Without them, after all, all life would be flat line and a horizon we’d never see.
Most people I know rush through the aching as though it’s gasoline and they are made of flame. Most avoid it at all costs, pushing it so far into the periphery of things that they forget it exists at all, pretending not to feel the gravity pull downward, pretending they haven’t known darkness before, that they will not know it again. How much is lost in this pantomime, how much sacrificed at the altar of misrepresentation, at the point of insulation against hardship. How much is lost when we forget that protecting ourselves from sadness also distances us from joy, wrapping us in so thick a cushion nothing can get in.
What I ask of those I love, of those that wander into my life in any kind of intimate capacity, be it friendship, relationship, family, hell even acquaintances, is that they pour out their ache as freely as they pour out their joy. I have no time for those who feign false positivity at all times, who push out and away the sorrowful moments to return to the happy ones as swiftly as possible. The point of this adventure through life is to experience the range of the human condition, the highs, the lows, the doldrums middles where you feel like nothing at all ever changes. Point is, ALL of it matters, it’s ALL part of it, and we NEED to experience both of them to provide the crucial juxtaposition that allows both their definition, their truth. No darkness, no star shine, after all.
What I ask of you, all of you now that you’re friends, family, now that we’re a community of light chasing fools, is that you do the same. Never insulate yourself from sorrow, from ache, never try to insulate US from them either. Please, I implore you, allow yourself the vulnerability to let it all out, to let it all in, and to express whatever emotion you’re feeling honestly, truthfully, vulnerably. We are here to support one another, we are here to hold each other up when low, to anchor when we are so high we feel like we’ll float away. Be this for others, demand this for yourself.
Begin tomorrow, begin right now, pour yourself like coffee, you will be caught like a cup. Never, ever, ever, waste your ache.
Pour like your coffee
and I’ll catch you like your cup.
Do not waste your ache.
Song of the Week
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I have read this three times over now because it is just so beautiful. Vulnerability is so difficult but so amazing to witness.
Tyler, maybe you know, this maybe you don’t and if so then we are all failing miserably; but your words are a gift! I don’t know how to say it any better, most the time I read them all words leave me and I’m left with nothing but the profound feeling of not being alone, no matter my current state.