Do Hard Things
Life is hard - there’s no way around it. It is simultaneously too short and too long. People and places and animals and plants come into your life, bringing richness and joy and pain, and then they depart our lives, taking with them that richness and joy and pain. All of those experiences leave a mark.
Nevertheless, we strive to charge cheerfully and optimistically forward with our lives. But somehow we suddenly find ourselves held back by that accretion of experience - the nagging scars that mean we no longer run up the mountains - we have to trudge forward carefully and gently. Which means, worst of all, that we have to become patient with ourselves.
So how do we navigate life? How do we find joy amidst the chaos? How do we simultaneously behave as if we are going to live forever and die tomorrow? To do that, we have to do the hardest thing of all. We have to love ourselves unconditionally. Our bodies, minds, spirits, souls - we have to love every damn thing about ourselves with a radical acceptance of who we are. Now. Today. As is.
We cannot wait to love ourselves - wait until we lose ten pounds, run ten miles, pray the right way, create the perfect piece of art. It is hard to believe in our own perfection - but we do hard things, right?
The first ten minutes of the Barbie movie, when all the Barbies in Barbieland love themselves so fully that they can accept compliments and accolades and awards and power without apology is nothing short of amazing. The Barbies are all different, with different jobs and skills, but they all love each other (as well as themselves), and openly admire and support each other. It’s a truly radical vision.
When we fully accept ourselves and love exactly who we are in this exact moment, the world changes. The lies - that grief and loneliness are forever, and that joy and love are out of reach, that we are not enough - fall away. The truth is that we are everything, everywhere, all at once. We are perfect in our brokenness, in our pain, our loneliness, our love, our creativity, our power. With time, experiences that were painful at the time emerge as pivotal points that bring us into greater joy. Our struggles teach us compassion, and compassion brings us forgiveness, and forgiveness brings us lightness.
There are no rules to life. We are not born with little instruction manuals in our hands. Humanity has been seeking to create meaning from the chaos since we were living in caves and painting the walls. For myself, I try to keep in mind that we live in a universe of literally infinite possibility, and that we do not understand anything at all - not time, not space, not life. Yes, with the help of both science and religion we have learned a few things - but the scope of what we know is infinitesimal compared to what we don’t know.
And so we keep doing hard things. We learn to make hay while the sun shines, because all we have is today. We understand that this too shall pass - whether ‘this’ is wonderful or terrible, time will work its magic and it will be gone. We challenge ourselves to climb the mountain, lift the wight, learn the thing. Do those things not because doing hard things will somehow make you better, make you worthy, make you lovable - do them because you are so in love with your own perfection and your own potential that you cannot wait to see what’s possible.
And on those days, or weeks, or months, that you cannot do the big and obvious hard things, applaud the fact that you can still do the hardest thing of all - wake up, breathe, and be perfect.