Three Truths and One Wish

1. Truth: Nervous anticipation, anxiety and worry is always worse than the actual thing that you are waiting on, fearing. When it comes, you will know what to do. Your heart might break, but you will survive it.

2. Truth: Uncertainty, not knowing, not being sure is uncomfortable. You sit with your confusion, your helplessness. You don’t know what to do, or how to help, and it’s irritating, it hurts.

3. Truth: Life is both tender and terrible, beautiful and brutal. Even in the moments when you feel like you can’t breathe, like your own thoughts and feelings are poisoning you, you are alive.

One wish: That we can, with wisdom and compassion, be where we are, fully open and awake, engaged and connected with all that is. That we remember we are not alone. That we can turn the poison into medicine.

1. Truth: Trying to be anyone other than who I am won’t make me happy. In some cases, comparison kills–my creativity, my sense of self-worth, my well-being, my sense of direction. To imagine I’d be happier or more loved if I just had that hair or her thighs or drove that car or lived in that house or had that job or lost 20 pounds (again) is a delusion. Nothing I don’t have, nothing I’m not will make me happy if I’m unable to be happy with what already is, as it is right now.

2. Truth: Perfectionism is a form of self-aggression. Trying to be someone I’m not won’t work, but attempting to become a perfect version of myself is just as dangerous. Perfection doesn’t exist, isn’t possible, and isn’t even preferable. Think about it: do you love the people you love because of what they get right (her hair is always perfect, her wardrobe stunning, her house spotless) or for their flaws (how she’s always tripping over everything, his crazy cowlick, how easily she cries, how he can never find his wallet, the way she snorts when she laughs really hard)?

3. Truth: The best I, the best any of us have to offer is exactly who we are, in this very moment. Crazy, confused, uncool freaks. And totally badass. Every one of us a precious, brilliant, stinky mess.

One Wish: That we show up with an open heart, completely and utterly in the moment as we are, fully accepting and embodying this moment, this self. That we are able to relax, be gentle, and let go.