Measuring Sticks

While it would be easy to look at the past year and judge what you have accomplished or what you have not accomplished — to hold a measuring stick to your life and see if you finally measure up, you would be doing a disservice to your story to do so.

The dreams and longings and desires in your heart will not cease to exist — and you will cycle through hope and despair more times than you'd like to in these seasons of waiting. But you can’t judge a year by its joys or by its accolades. Because it may be another year or another 10 before you can show us that beautiful thing, that beautiful achievement, that beautiful person, that beautiful dream.

Instead, take pride in the fact that you are still here. In your incredibly complicated journey. You are here. Still hoping and holding and fighting and breathing. Still loving. Still dreaming. Still taking chances. Despite time, setbacks, pain, grief, and disappointment — despite the stars not aligning and no so called happy ending in sight.

I hope you always remember these moments — even if better moments lie ahead. Even if you end up with a year where your heart is so full of happiness that it might actually burst at the weight of it. Even then — I hope you remember.

This was the time that you secretly shined. Even if no one else sees it or understands it but you. These years, these decades in the fire, these past and present lives, have all shaped you into who you are becoming and who you have always been meant to be.

New Year

To be fearless is nothing at all. I think this past year taught me that fearlessness and boldness are two very different things. Boldness is not the absence of fear – but perseverance in spite of your fears. By all accounts, my successes at times could be considered by many as less than noteworthy. But this thing we call life was never about trophy or triumph. To be fearless requires nothing. To be bold requires everything. I’ve felt a little beaten down, a little wounded, a little tired. I’ve scolded myself for being too idealistic. For opening my heart. For holding onto dreams that drift further away with each passing year. But I’m still here. I’m still here. And that has to count for something. Perhaps it counts for a good many somethings. If our successes are not measured by what we can achieve but in our ability to give everything we’ve got, even on the days we’ve got very little to give, then I have succeeded far beyond my expectations. 

Outside my window, the tiniest flakes of snow swirl and dance. The earth is still. Covered in white. And all I know is that I’m still the girl who believes in possibilities. In beauty, and love, and breathtaking light. I’m still the girl who is so far from fearless but embraces boldness. What that will require of me I can’t know. Maybe this new year is my denouement, and the scenes of my story so far will finally make sense. Maybe not. But I can’t focus on that. All I have right now is this tiny fraction of time, this flicker, this hushed wind. And I’m not looking back. I’m not offering my best 9 moments, but rather I’m offering this one, solitary moment – and then I’m moving forward. Fearful, and hopeful, and fully alive.
 

The Idealist

You blame yourself. You blame your big, bold idealist heart. You grew up with grand dreams and lofty expectations, but you didn’t plan on the difficult moments. As a child, you couldn’t foresee the heartbreaks, the disappointments, the emptiness. You couldn’t identify your predisposition to feel things so intensely or understand your sensitive, artistic nature. You couldn’t recognize the beauty in it just as much as you couldn’t anticipate the challenges.

You learned to roll with the punches. You bounced back from every move. You pushed aside the things that hurt you. But with each roll and bounce and push, your once wild, open, childlike heart with its big dreams and bigger hopes grew a little bit darker, sullied by invalidation and loss of things you could never put a name to. With that harsh reality came acceptance that everything you'd hoped for might be out of reach for someone like you.

And yet, through all the things that could have broken you, that did break you, that might still break you, the idealist fights to hold on. And every now and then, when your guard is down, the idealist whispers -- inspiring you, and reminding you that happiness is possible, dreams are reachable, and love is against all odds entirely attainable.

Free Spirits

Somehow the world would have us think that normal is what we should be. And if we aren’t normal, then that should be our goal. But perhaps your inability to feel like you truly belong is the tool that drives you forward – to seek after the dreams in your heart, as elusive as they appear to be at times.

We complicate so many things unnecessarily. Following your heart is perhaps the riskiest venture you’ll ever undertake because your mind wants to tell you otherwise – to talk you out of the crazy ideas and notions your heart is telling you. The mind is the logic, but the heart is the dreamer in all of us.

And though you may feel like a dreamer stuck in a world barraging you with the message that you must conform to normality, remember that free spirits don’t conform. Free spirits have always and will always make their own path. People are afraid to change – afraid of change. But you – you are the game changer. You are the one meant to seek new adventures and experiences. To keep moving forward. To grow. To challenge yourself and others. And you do that by being different. By being bold. By being you.

It’s ok to dream. 

It’s ok to believe in love, and to fight for it. 

It’s ok to feel restless, because perhaps that restlessness is your heart trying to move your feet down a path you wouldn’t have otherwise gone down if you were content and comfortable and safe. 

Embrace the free spirit that you are. Embrace your wildness. Embrace yourself, and be free.