So many people it takes to make a person. One to grow it, two for its makeup. But a lifetime of active contributors will follow. They foster us, guide us, and give up pieces of themselves. In the end, what a person becomes far exceeds what two people designed. We are a patchwork of all the people around us who save our skin by grafting … Continue reading The makeup of man

I’ve come to believe that there is no fracturing happiness. Moments of tragedy aren’t a collection of fissures that shatter an unbroken plane of contentment. If happiness is a line, it’s a crooked one. It bends and warps around knots and nicks in the surface of our lives. It doesn’t end, it’s never disrupted, only redirected. A comet came and it killed the dinosaurs. But … Continue reading Redirected energy

Your gilded mask wears heavy on your face, but you’re careful not to let it slip. Your predatory eyes peer through and they stir the unease in my belly. When the light shines just right, I see the scar tissue that festers beneath. One lashing look at the turmoil that requires your covering. You’re careful how you waltz along the shadows, you know how to … Continue reading The truth is but a bitter wine

In moments of unadulterated life, I buckle. I gasp, I exclaim, I clutch something close. I don’t act. And this, more than anything, has defined my life. Against the looming, grand hopes, I dug into where I was standing. I shied away from the beckoning light. It’s taken me decades to fulfill what I’ve proven to be easy and accessible to me. And it just … Continue reading A toe dipped

What will it take for me to lie my tattered body across the mother ground and tell it to do with me what it will? When will I lean in completely to the gravity around me and ask it to ferry me forward, just so? My strings were cut quite a long time ago, I am ready to act out the course of my life … Continue reading I wonder

I was so used to taking life at a docile pace. I saw pretty things along the path and I filed them away. I always meant to go back. I said someday I would do it. It was only once I realized that I’d been casually meandering in the wrong direction that it occurred to me to run. Run as fast as I could towards … Continue reading Yours for the taking

Under every disciplinary lash out towards a subject lies a personal insecurity on the part of the superior. Perhaps we think we’re reprimanding them for not fulfilling their duties, but perhaps they’re simply not playing the role we cast them in. Maybe we’re dissatisfied with their response to something, but maybe that’s only because they’re validating concerns we had about our own judgement calls. To … Continue reading Graceless

People are more than willing to spare some of their love if you are even slightly willing to ask. We wrestle with our demons in matches to the death to avoid indisposing someone else. Gracefully, indispose them. Show up on their doorstep with your heart in your hands and ask from just a little bit of their mercy. Watch what happens. Love is not something … Continue reading Fortune’s favor

There’s a strange comfort in worry. It gives you someone to sit with. It may be a grim company you keep, but at least you don’t have to be alone with your unease. It’s a funny thing, how we have our wires crossed. We’re programmed to seek out balance and contentedness, but when our minds feel an itch we can’t ignore it, we must scratch. … Continue reading Like a bad penny

I wonder what questions are not worth answering. What is the boundary that separates human pondering from wise to maniacal? When does our reading into the source code of things become pedantic? When does “everything happens for a reason” betray itself to coincidence? I find peace in the unpredictability of life by finding lessons in it. Little happenstances that center me back on a course … Continue reading Wisdom in acceptance