... and it's all small stuff

Pedal backwards. Out of your casket and out of the clothes the funeral home put you in. Let your laugh lines melt away but hold onto the laughter. Slip your hand into mine, feel your knuckles share that pain that comes from squeezing too hard, and whatever you do - don't let go. Flip your pencil upside down and erase all of the things you tried to make time for, without realising that you would never have enough time. Keep pedaling. Let yourself laugh out loud at all those times you bit your lip trying not to. The only serious thing about life, is death. Everything else is secondary. Let yourself be present in a moment, stop pining for a thing of the past or yearning for a future without believing that you'll make it, no questions. Don't stop just yet. We're almost there, but wait, where are we going? Allow yourself the luxury to feel. To feel and not to fight the frustration, the humiliation, the anxiety, the pain that makes you swear on your tazo card collection you could hear the moment your world fell to pieces. Because I promise you, these are not the moments you will replay when there is nothing left to see of this world.

Let death remind you to live your life.

Life is what's happening while we're busy making other plans.  -- John Lennon

until the last

Is it the dark that you fear? When you were a child, fear lay in the space where your hands could no longer reach and your eyes could no longer see. The blackness was overwhelming, suffocating, too too much to bear. It was terrifying to think that you could both shut and open your eyes, and the air had already turned to ink.

Disappointment. Humiliation. Guilt.

Inferiority.

Things we inevitably encounter when venturing into adulthood. It may be in the comparison of yourself to others; to their bank balance, to their hair, to their talents.

Talent. Does it pose such a threat because it surrounds me in a way that darkness consumes children? It is an innate ingredient that God chooses to include in some, and not others. Why? Have we the permission to ask?

Dig dig dig. Dig deeper. Claw until you undo every single stitch.

Study their eyes, can you see yourself in them? I like crows feet. Why does your lip do that when you talk, it doesn't matter if it's a compliment or a prayer or a lie. Why?

Connection. It's more than a hello. It's more than sharing dessert, it's more than sharing a bed, it's sharing your LIVES. It's sharing your days, your yesterday, today and tomorrow, your birthday and their birthday and the next fifty to come.

I want to be something. Let me be something. More than a go to, more than a middle man, more than an assistant, more than a shoulder to rest on, or to cry on, more than a sponge thrown into rose water and then blood.

Let me.

back back back

What are we running away from, and what are we running towards? Why are we running so fast? Is your future my future? Is mine yours?

Where do you see yourself in five years? How about ten? Thirty? What do you mean you don't know?

What are you passionate about? What drives you, what agonises you, what pulls you out of bed every morning and what keeps you wrapped up in those blankets calling in sick?

What are you afraid of? What do you look for around corners, behind sheets of cardboards, in the bottom of your cereal bowl; in life?

Who deserves your hours, the sweat and blood and tears you give so effortlessly and willingly, your heart? What could possibly take every part of you and know with a smile that tomorrow you will have more to give?

I want to find that. More than anything I want to find YOU, on my own. For myself.