Surprises are not there to throw you off. In fact, they gift you with not knowing a priori and thereby grant you the freedom to respond without preparation from the mind. They give you the present of being in the present. Surprises, both the comforting and the discomforting kind, grant you the freedom to experience. Always welcome surprises, they tell you of your agility. They communicate your flexibility. They show you where you might be stopping yourself from experiencing, where you might be stuck and they show you when you have finally surrendered and let go. Surprises are great indicators of progress. They transform. They create space for new potential. They grant you the opportunity to adapt. A surprise is a direct invitation from the Unknown to come a little closer, to step away for a moment from the realm of knowledge and into the realm of experience. Surprises ask us to tap into the wisdom of our bodies. They offer us the chance to flow with the Divine Mother. Surprises wake up the Sacred Feminine within us. They allow us to see that we too come from the Mother, that we resemble the Earth, that we are the Earth herself.
Portable aren’t they these voice of ours? Yet how is that we lose them sometimes? And how is it that we find them when they are already with us? If they are always there, if they never vanished, then is it our memory of their presence that vanished? Is it us who forget our voices and not our voices that forget us? But why forget our voice? Why abandon such an integral part of ourselves, why remain quiet? They say a baby’s cry at birth is to recognise their own vibration, to know their presence, to hear their existence. Our voices are our DNA in sound. They not only tell us about ourselves but tell the world about us. As you might have already noticed, some voices are louder than others, some scream for attention and others forcefully quiet themselves to disappear. What happens when you forget your own voice because you haven’t used it in years or used it only in unison with another and made noise instead? What happens when you can no longer hear yourself, when you fall mute and go deaf to your own vibration? What happens when you finally decide that you want to speak but can’t because you’ve lost all contact with your voice? What happens when you look and look for your own sound but do not know what you are looking for because you’ve forgotten what you sound like? How then can you keep yourself safe? How can you tell a foreign vibration from your own? How can you tell if someone entered your space if you do not know where your space begins in the first place, who your space is, and what your space is made of? Could you have been afraid of an intruder this whole time that was you because you forgot that this is what you sound like? Could you have been hiding this whole time from the big bad wolf only to realise the wolf is you? Could you have been chasing your own tail this whole time? Fear muddles our vibration and confuses us. It creates doubt around our boundaries and we can no longer recognise where outside begins and inside ends. But fear developed from self is only fear now; fear in the present that later transforms into love but only when you can remember who you are, what you feel like, and what you sound like. So speak up. It is the only way you can finally recognise this sound is coming from you. It is possible to violate one’s own space, just as it is possible to suffocate oneself. And the only way to stop yourself from suffocating is to recognise it is your own hands that are choking you. It is your own silence that is eating you up. So let it out. Those sounds you wish to make. Wail. Cry. Until you can finally sing with the butterflies once more.
They say guilt is a feeling. They say it comes from regret. And regret only comes from a time that has passed. For guilt to arise, one must be living in the past. For guilt to pass, one must arrive to the present. Guilt is a train inviting us to journey away from our past and into the present. But to ride the train of Guilt, one must be prepared to travel light. We cannot carry anything or anyone from the past, and that includes ourselves. And that is the hardest part. Leaving ourselves behind. All the selves that no longer serve us. All the selves that are too young or too old to be present. How harsh it is to leave a child behind? How brutal it is to leave a sick person behind? How evil it is to leave a hungry one behind? How heartless it is to let all those people die?
But you see they have all already died. Yet you carry them with you refusing to honour their memory and forget about them once and for all. How heavy one dead body can be, imagine carrying ten. It is very difficult to forget something that was once alive. We feel by forgetting those parts, those people, it would be like they never existed, like all that happened in the past never was. By letting go of all that was, we risk forgetting who we are. We risk forgetting that we were once loved, that we were once happy, that we were once in pain. But laying something to rest, laying all these aging parts to rest is the only way to survive the present. One cannot live their life scattered all across a timeline, for what purpose does that fulfill except shield us from the guilt we are afraid to confront of leaving someone behind. The guilt makes it feel like we killed them. But it is just time that has. Time washes away every memory, every person, until nothing remains but a clean slate more fertile, more rich than the one before. Trees don’t feel guilt over the leaves they shed. They know it’s a necessary part of the process if their soil is to become richer and their roots stronger. The earth needs to eat too and the earth is also what feeds them. A leaf must fall for another to grow later. Trees trust that new leaves will grow once again but first nature has to run its course. This is not to say that loss is not significant or the guilt of moving on is not real. It is just to say that nature has a system for dealing with loss and so let the guilt carry you through her system. Let it carry you and support you in the process of shedding. It is hard to throw anything out let alone loved memories, loved ones and our beloved young and old selves. So feel the discomfort of guilt, it is ushering you into the present. Guilt is how you know you need to shed. It is signaling tool telling you you need to move on. Guilt, too, carries our grief with it because sometimes it is much easier to feel guilt than grief. Guilt, itself, is training you to shed Guilt. When you finally reach the last stop on the train, the hardest part will be getting off that train and leaving Guilt behind. But by then you will be ready, for you will have shed much more precious things than Guilt. Finally, you will experience your present without being seduced and guilted by anything from your past. And perhaps a new seducer might come visiting from the future, but by then you will know the drill and another journey shall begin.
Often we try to move but find ourselves in the same spot. Square 1 we like to call it. Although we are still where we’ve always been, we notice something has changed. Something does feel different. But if it’s not where we stand on the outside then something must’ve shifted on the inside. It must be us. The inside you see is not as still as the outside, we just seldom look at it because we are constantly striving for movement but it’s already there happening inside of us all the time. We move countries, jobs, friends, homes, all in pursuit of something. In pursuit of ourselves, but our selves are already here with us. All we need is a moment alone with our selves to realise the moving hasn’t been in pursuit of ourselves, it’s been a deliberate escaping from ourselves. As stressful, as busy, hectic and erratic the outside world may seem, there is nothing louder and more congested than the traffic jams of our minds. Peace of mind, “happiness” as we like to call it, does not come from a beautiful home, a stable job or a conflict-free marriage. Peace of mind comes from a conflict-free self, a mind and body that are given attention, that are seen the way we see the people we love, that are gifted and celebrated when it is time and disciplined and quieted when necessary. All you could ever want is right where you are, all you need to do is look at it.
But it’s not that easy to look at our selves at first. So much is happening. You don’t know where to even begin to look. You feel overwhelmed. You remember your breath, you go with it, and for a moment it takes you away from all that traffic. But you find yourself pulled back to a party of thoughts, fireworks are going off everywhere, your ears begin to hurt and you remember your breath. It pulls you out again to a quieter place, and again more thoughts come, and again your breath pulls you back, and back and forth you seesaw from mind to body, and you grow tired of their war. You want peace. You decide to resolve this conflict between them and mediate their peace talks. You begin to mediate and very quickly you realise that you cannot understand what they’re saying. You listen closely but hear no words, you realise this isn’t a language you can decipher from a dictionary, it’s a language unique to your own mind and body and to understand this language, you must learn to observe and decipher patterns in their communications. So you begin to listen like you’ve never listened before. And after much observing and watching yourself, you finally know all there is to know. Nothing. You finally know that there is absolutely nothing to know. And if there is nothing to know, then there is nothing to observe. You finally notice the quiet, the silence. Peace has finally come. And finally you realise you have made it. You are here. You are finally now.here. Finally “present”. You realise you were here all along, you just hadn’t noticed it. We are always at square one, we will always be at square one, so what changed? Absolutely nothing. You see the unsettled mind only appears to be unsettled when we first look at it. The mind isn’t what settles, it’s our gaze that does. Thoughts are like a painting covering a blank canvas, the colours are always there but so is the blank canvas too.
Change is an illusion of the mind, as is stillness an illusion of the eyes. The walls you see all around you, the floors beneath your feet, the trees outside might all seem pretty fixed in place, but look at them long enough and you will see they not only move but dance too. It is a dance always between the inside and outside, between body and mind, between change and stillness. All we really have the power to shift is our gaze. Whatever you choose to adjust your gaze to, whatever frequency you choose you will see it everywhere and in everything. If you choose to see anger, you will see it even in the trees. If you choose to see fear, you will haunt your own dreams. If you choose to see love, it will ooze out of everything you lay your eyes on. It is all about how we see. It is how we choose to observe that changes the world around us and even changes us to ourselves. It only feels different because our eyes see different. So cherish your eyes, they are your gift, your superpower. If you feel powerless in any situation, know that no one has power over your eyes except your self, and no one can take away that power except yourself. Progress isn’t that we change but that we learn to use our eyes differently. Progress is a matter of perception. So open your eyes wide, and intentionally choose the channel you would like to watch. Don’t settle for the one you know best. Always remember: It’s your tv and you’ve got the remote control to it right between your eyes. So use it wisely. It’s your magic wand! 🙂
There is no wrong feeling. There is no ought to feel, or should feel. There is onlyI am feeling. A truth only true in the present. A truth only true to you. There is no proof of it except your word for it. And I’m afraid words are fickle. People don’t believe words. They believe only their own thoughts on the words expressed. And so the more you can make your words believable to others, the more you become believable to others. So how do we get our words to be believable? How can we get people to believe us? To trust us? And the answer is simple: You need to believe what you say. If you believe your own words, others will. If there is an inkling of doubt in anything you say, people will know. How? They will feel it. And feelings don’t lie. They are our primary tool to discern information both emanating from inside of us and outside. Even though we can’t tell exactly what another is feeling, we can tell if what they’re saying matches how they feel about it because you either believe them or you don’t. You can validate their expression of what they claim the truth to be but not the truth itself. So why is it important if people believe what we say? Because it is the only way to tell if we believe what we say, if we believe ourselves. People need one another to validate each other’s truths. Our truth hides from us the same way our eyes do. We never get to see our eyes, we only ever see their reflection in mirrors and other people’s eyes. So in a way, we can never see ourselves on our own. It is only through other people that we can see what we look like. And so it is with our faith, the only chance we have at seeing it at all is through its reflection in others. Not everyone desires to see themselves, not all desire to see their faith, but for those of you who want to see it, you need other people to help you out.
People can believe in different things while still believing in each other. Finding faith isn’t finding what is absolutely and universally true. It is finding what is true to you. Faith is knowing what you believe in and continuing to believe in it despite what other people’s faiths are. Faith is holding on to your truth knowing all well that it is only true to you, and that it is only true to you in this moment. Faith is holding on to your truth knowing that tomorrow this truth could change and no longer be true, but choosing to stick by it anyway and committing yourself to it today. Faith is believing when there is no reason to. Faith is knowing there will never be proof for your faith except for your faith in it. And the only proof there is for your faith in what you say you believe in is other people’s faith in your words. We need people to have faith in us not because it feels good to be trusted and believed, but because it is the only way to know we have faith in ourselves, and there is no more crucial faith to have than in yourself. It is important to note that people’s faith in our words is not what creates faith in our words, it is simply the evidence for our own faith. You must believe your words first before anyone will ever believe them. You must have faith in yourself first before anyone else will. Other people merely offer us a reflection of our truth so that we can see what it looks like and learn to recognise it. But you know yourself before you ever see your reflection in the mirror. Always remember that. Always remember your faith comes from you. It is only through others that we can see it. But you always have it there inside of you. It is just sometimes we forget what it looks like, and when we do, people can help offer us a reflection of it until we can find it again. So allow yourself to trust your words, allow yourself to believe in yourself, and if you can’t, if you are struggling to trust yourself, a good place to start is with other people. Trust their eyes for a moment if you can’t trust your own. They will offer you a reflection of what you refuse to see with your own eyes, until one day you are finally ready to trust your own. So you see, dear quarter lives, when your faith is in crisis, extend it to another, and they will show you the way. When we are struggling to find our own faith, we can find it in another. In learning to believe another, we learn to believe ourselves, in learning to trust another, we learn to trust ourselves, in learning to love another, we learn to love ourselves. Sometimes it is far easier to zip up another’s gown than it is our own. So dear quarter lives, may you find your faith in one another because it’s the only place you ever will.
Remember not that which has passed. Remember not the memories. But the lessons. It is only for that purpose that we remember, that we have memories, to understand what we need to learn, to then go ahead and learn it, and when we have learnt it, we must forget now. To forgive is not to forget the memory itself. To forgive is to forego any further action in reaction to that memory. It is to forget the need to respond. And if a memory no longer warrants an action or emotion from you, it no longer belongs to you anymore. You must give it back. You must create space for new memories by emptying out the old. If your closet is full, it cannot take on any new clothes. And it is the new garments that nourish, that allow for change, that bring a sense of excitement and newness in our lives. If we don’t actively pursue changing the contents of our closets, upgrading them, assessing and reassessing to see what we still need, what we no longer need, and what we are struggling to throw out, we won’t be able to see what has gone bad and is infesting the rest of our closet. We must always revisit our closets, and clean them out, just like we would our home. We must regularly declutter our souls to create space before we add new furniture.
Clearing our souls is no different than clearing our homes. Can you redecorate a house full of its original contents or must you take everything out first and start fresh? Then after you have decluttered and cleaned out your house, it is then that one can start to paint the walls and add picture frames and a coffee table. If one’s house is full to the point it compromises your movement, you risk getting stuck inside. You grow isolated and lonely because you can’t visit anyone and no one can visit you. There’s no space to move just like in a hoarder’s home. This is how people get sick, how they begin to feel at dis-ease within their own bodies all because there’s no space for their soul to move. And to move, one needs to create space for movement. So creativity is key to maintaining a healthy home for your soul. Our bodies are the homes that our souls inhabit and our souls can only endure a dirty home for so long. Many have died because they have resisted change. Many have died because they held on to too many memories, to too many emotions, to too much pain. They refused to let it out. To let it go. And that I believe is what suicide is. Our soul choosing to leave the dirty and congested house. The house where so much space is taken up by the past, by pain, that there is no more room for our soul to move. Our souls fall to overwhelm. They become tense, stunted, and unable to grow. And soon our soul chooses to open the door, or perhaps if it can’t reach the door it will opt for the closest window to leave. It is a choice yes. But it is one out of desperation. So let us clean our houses regularly, let us make a celebration out of it, let us set an example for our neighbours, for our children and our friends. Let us show that it is fun to declutter, that it is spiritual to forget, that it is an act of love for our souls to forgive.
It is for all those souls that have died because their houses were too full, their bodies too suffocating that I write this. It is for all those souls looking for the window to leave, I write this. It is for you that I say: Hold on just a moment longer. I had almost left my home through the window too, but someone had knocked on my door at the right time, and said, “Hold on. Wait a second. Do you need a hand cleaning up?”. And that saved my life. It is a moment of kindness that saved my life. A moment of mercy from the Universe. A second chance at cleaning my home. But I needed help. And I had to ask for it. So I would like to emphasise this point particularly that it is not enough for us to recognise we need help, but we must be intentional in our desire to receive help and actively pursue it. Help isn’t just therapy. Help comes in many shapes and sizes. Help can be admitting to a friend that you are not as okay as you might seem. It could be going on a hiking trip. It could be a dance class or a cooking one. It could be just writing in your journal. For me, writing helps me create space. Without it, I couldn’t move. It was writing that knocked on my door and said, “Wait a minute…we’re not done here. I think you could use me as you clear your house.” And indeed I used it to clear out so much. I will forever be grateful for that knock. Today, I would like to give back the knock that was once so kindly handed to me. As it is with our breaths, we must always exhale what we inhale, we must give back tomorrow what we receive today. And so let go of the love of yesterday, let go of the happiness of your childhood, and the sadness too. Make space for new emotions, new memories, new people. Even the most wonderful of memories held for too long will ferment, grow mold and eventually go bad. So let go and begin this new year clean, clear and light. It’s time for you to redecorate.
I have yet to find words that can articulate the marvel and genius that is this piece of art. I’ve seen the film 3 times in 4 days, and I still haven’t had enough. And I don’t think it’s just about the story, but about wanting to be in close proximity to magic. The thing about this movie is that it is exactly the kind of movie that has the power to change the world, and to be in the presence of that power is extremely nourishing. You see, it is a story about all of us. About the darkness that has befallen our world because of our need to other. Take today, for example, it is a day like any other, as are we, each one of us, a human like any other. And to that extent, it means we have all othered and been othered. We are all an other in some way to some one. It is the natural product of the language we use. As each word has an opposite, each idea too. Good the opposite of evil, and god the opposite of devil.
The reason this film is so important today is because our humanity is at a crossroads. Change is here, and it is now up to us to listen closely to the aids that come our way, the mirrors that are reflecting us back to us, warning us of our demise, the mirrors offering us an out, an escape. But listen we must. Open our eyes, we must. It is not enough to just observe anymore, for we have observed for too long. We have given power to a select few to take action on our behalf and forgotten that each one of us can take action too. It is no longer sufficient to point fingers at those representatives of state whom we’ve elected or doctors we’ve trusted or teachers we’ve surrendered our minds to. It is up to us now. It is up to us to reclaim our power. That is what Joker is about in my view. It is about re-empowering our selves. Reclaiming what is ours. Not taking back what others have taken from us. But taking back the otherness we have imposed on others and on the world. It is not about being anti-state or anti-rich or anti-corporations, it is about embracing the anti. Whomever and whatever we’ve anti-ed. The world, politics, history — all narratives told of one side versus another. It is time we come together and relinquish the need to tell our story versus anything at all, for it has all in fact been versus ourselves. It starts with embracing the other gender, the other race, the other human. It all begins with us, and it will all end with us. The question is do we want it to end by us now?
Whatever views and whatever beliefs you hold so tight and so dear to your identity, this film is inviting you to un-identify, for it is the identifying in the first place that has caused this otherness. It is when we so rigidly subscribe ourselves to a belief that we exclude ourselves from others, thereby othering ourselves. It is not the otherness that is done unto us, it is in fact the otherness we do unto ourselves. The whole point of the film, in my view, can be summed up in a single line where Joker expressed his lack of belief, “I don’t believe in anything”. That is exactly what transformed Arthur Fleck into Joker. And that is exactly what he’s inviting us to do to ignite the Joker within us. It is precisely the I don’t believe in any(particular)thing that is inclusive of everyone. It is that lack of attachment to beliefs, that lack of particularity about what you do and don’t believe that brings people together. It is what unifies us into an “us” rather than splitting us into a “they and them”. I know this might be a little too philosophical, but the state of the world, of nature, of our internal lives is in dire need of deep reflection. We cannot ignore what is right in front of us. Like it is a crime to watch another kill another without doing anything, it is too a crime to watch our societies kill each other, kill nature, kill our minds without doing anything. It is an action too to chose to do nothing. But it isn’t nothing we should do, rather nothing we should believe in. It is our belief in no(particular)thing that will save our humanity, that will fill our hearts once more with compassion and our faces with kindness.
I hope that love finds our world once more, for it has been gone too long. And not because it has been taken from us, but because we have been choosing to give it to particular people and refusing to give it to others. By discriminating with our love, we have chosen to only love some(particular)things and refused to love every(particular)thing. And to love everything, we must be inclusive with our love and not love any(particular)thing. And you see the only way to be open to not love any(particular)thing is to be open too with our beliefs and not believe in any(particular)thing.
One last important takeaway from this film – which I think has been gravely misunderstood and the reason too it is so controversial – is that we need not set actual fires or fire bullets to ignite change, the destructive power of creativity is more than enough to transform anything. And the film itself is exactly that — it is the creative bullet that has ignited a fire within all of us and threatens to destroy our belief systems more than any actual bullet or fire can ever do. The story is about the internal life of a person, and so the violence too is metaphorical and reflects the destruction and the movement that creativity ignites within all of us. This film is about waking up the Joker within all of us, and the power and unity that comes when we break free from our deep need to associate with anything, that is how we all become the clown, one human indistinguishable from another, united! Isn’t that what shedding our egos is all about?
Thank you for reading! And please share and help spread the love.
In recent decades, there has been an emphasis in education on high performance, and in doing so, people have made the assumption that a more learned person is a person with higher grades. There cannot be a more untrue statement. Perhaps it is the way tests are standardised and how the grading system works, but learning is not the same as going to school. Learning is a life-long skill, and for most of our lives, it is self-initiated learning, there is no classroom, no teacher in the conventional sense, no one to tell you you must learn, or acquire an end result. Often times we do not know exactly where this learning is taking us, but we must go with it anyway. But schools have forgotten and teachers with them that schools are not merely there to produce good workers, but to produce resilient humans, ones that can endure life, for there is no tougher boss, and no tougher teacher. And unfortunately the skills taught in school today equip you in no way at all for this continuous independent-learning called life. And because we have forgotten that the goal is not to survive till retirement, but to survive till death comes for us, we have not prepared people for life. It is the ethical duty not only of parents but of educators to teach children how to acquire knowledge. Not all knowledge is in classrooms and not all knowledge comes from books. For some of the greatest teachers can be in our backyards, a tree is a great teacher, but we need to be told that it is okay to access alternative forms of learning, ones maybe that can’t be tested, ones where students cannot be shown a right or wrong answer. By ignoring the needs of a human life, and focusing on the needs of corporations, we have neglected millions of souls on the way and polluted many others, and like it is our responsibility to clean up the environment, it is our ethical duty to clean up our souls and the souls of the communities we live amongst.
” It is true. It is always the most fun when it is without purpose. To write these words, to observe these faces, and to breathe in these smells. It is with humour that we must take it all in. This is the best advice I can give you on how to be a clown. And there is no better advice than that for how to be human.
A clown must always be colourful, silly, and in costume. A clown should never take himself too seriously. He must always remember he is in character and not the character. A clown must be clear to be funny. A clown must always direct the crowd. It is this that is the most difficult task. For a clown cannot see oneself as he acts. He can only see himself through his observers, their reactions, their eyes and giggles. So to be a clown, one must learn to read oneself from the crowd, one must learn to see oneself in others without judgement, without prejudice, for any judgement and any prejudices will be made in fact against ourself. It is an attack upon ourselves when we attack another with judgements. And so, one must always observe with humour. Humour is not only the product of a clown’s presence, it is the process by which they attain presence. Humour is the guide. It is the light. Follow it like a clown, and a crowd pleaser you will be. A crowd pleaser is not one that fulfills the expectations of the crowd. A clown, a true crowd-pleaser, is one that fulfills desires unknown to the crowd, it is a clown that fills the space with laughter, spaces thought of as absent before, but now with laughter they are present, they have been brought into the light. It is humour with which we can truly engage with what we lack, with empty vessels, empty people, for they are not lacking because something is wrong with them, they are just absent, they have less energy than is required to be present, and what better way to refuel your body, your soul than with laughter.
Laughter is the grandest of all energies. It vibrates, produces sound and even movement. It lights a fire in the belly, producing a light within. Humour is the air that keeps the candle burning inside, for otherwise it would be too dark, too dark to see anything, so everything falls into nothingness, into absence, so laugh your way through it all. Learn from the mighty clown, and laugh a little. Laugh a little and laugh always. For there is no issue too important, no issue too serious that it cannot be brought into the light with some humour. All wants to be funny. All wants to induce laughter. All wants to make light. So do not resist it, let it be what it wants to be. Let it make you laugh, and cry tears of joy. Let it shake your belly like an earthquake. Let it burn through the darkness within, and bring a lightness to your heart. Let Humour carry you. She would love to. “
“ They always told us to eat slowly at dinner, to eat with our mouths closed, no elbows at the table, and finally they told us not to eat too much. But they never told us about emotions, what do we do with them at the dinner table? Do we share our tears or conceal them, if we show up with sadness tonight? Or do we tell the jokes exploding in our brain with laughter making us grin ever so slyly at the dinner table? Or do we remove ourselves from the table ever so absolutely when fury paints our cheeks red radiating colour and heat across the dinner table tonight? What should we do with our emotions at the dinner table? You never told us. But if we were to infer the rules from observing your behaviour than I suppose we must conceal it all, the sadness, the laughter and the anger. But mother, did you know that we could see through it all? All of us, father, sister, and brother. Perhaps it wasn’t us you were concealing it from, but yourself. I suppose it is hard to see oneself sad, foolish, or angry. I wonder if you succeeded. Because if you failed to hide your feelings away, if you still felt that you were all those things, sad, foolish and angry, sometimes even simultaneously, we would have loved it if you had shared it with us. Isn’t that after all what dinner tables are for? For sharing things? Both tangible and intangible? Perhaps that is why we never left the dinner table satiated, and not because you told us not to eat too much, but because we were never fed the intangible, we were always hungry but never knew why, for after all it was your responsibility to make sure we left the dinner table feeling full, feeling satisfied. Instead you watched us starve, knowing that there was something else you needed to offer us. All dinner table menus are the responsibility of the mother. Or did you not know that? Did your mother not tell you what to do at the dinner table as you have so clearly outlined for us what not to do at the dinner table, restricting our diet to mere food? Or was she like you too? Do you know it today at least? After all those years? Or are you still hiding things from yourself? Is it not a difficult endeavor to pretend oneself is blind forever? Do you not miss seeing how you look in the mirror? Do you not miss running? Are you not tired of tiptoeing making sure you do not trip or walk straight into a wall? What if you opened only one eye today? If only you could see that the light is not too bright, but just right. If only you could see my face, do you not miss it? Or are you so scared of seeing anything else, that you have chosen to sacrifice our faces too? Remember though we still have our eyes mother, have you not thought that we can see you? Have you not thought how painful it must be to watch you try to hide from yourself, to hide from us, your children, to hide from the world all together? Do you know the pain of mourning a mother that is still alive? Have you not thought that our pain might be great too? Have you not thought you could spare us it? Do you ever think of us? Do you love us? Have you ever loved us? Tell me, mother, do you even know how to love?”
It is true that mothers face the great pressure of obligatory love. Why is it that a mother must love her child? Why is it assumed? Why compulsory? Why if a mother is strong enough and honest enough to recognise that perhaps her heart is too broken to love another, even herself, is she deemed a monster, unworthy of any goodness or kindness to come her way? It is for that reason that mothers all over feel such shame to seek help when they realise they do not love their kids. It is not their fault, and neither is it the fault of their kids, but we must help them repair their hearts, repair themselves, only then can they love again, only then can the children of the world again feel love. Children know unconsciously the truth; there are superficial actions of love, but they cannot mask the real thing, no matter how well the mother tries to hide it. This piece of writing was written for the mothers of the world whose hearts are too broken to even love their children, and for all those children of the broken-hearted mothers who are starving for love and affection. If we do not have these kinds of conversations, things will never get better, things will never change. Society too likes to hide from its own shortcomings, but today perhaps we can face them together. We can offer an ear or lend a hand to a mother or a child in need of love. There is no shame in being unable to love. There is no shame either in needing love. It is often difficult for us to ask for love or help, so if you recognise someone in your life who could use some compassion, do not shy away from giving it to them. Give the gift of love and compassion to those mothers and children once more. It is for our children now who will become mothers and fathers for their children in the future, that we must have these bold conversations.
Dear Quarter Lives 