people who have experienced deep suffering
and are still gentle with others
do not get enough credit
to not let the hard things
that happened to you win is heroic work,
to drop the bitterness
and still live with an open heart
despite it all
is a massive gift to the world
- Yung Pueblo/ Diego Perez
Thank you for your comment on my Facebook post from a few weeks ago, the post with the quote by Yung Pueblo.
The quote about the people who have been through the hard but still find a way to keep their hearts open and how it’s a gift to the world. Your comment said you saw this in me.
Honestly? My first thought was, no, not me. No, this quote is about those who have been through the epic. But then I remembered that I had a front-row seat to all the times an emotional experience grabbed the spotlight of my attention. I remembered how I’d call out to the Folks Upstairs, crying or raging as I starred in my own personal Greek tragedy, bent like Atlas under the weight of emotions and, unlike Elsa, unable to let it go, let it go, unable to process it differently in the moment of the unfolding, thereby making those experiences feel astoundingly epic.
And then I thought, okay. Maybe I have had my experiences of the epic. But I can get so caught up. You don’t see the times when the anger or bitterness or sadness of an interaction has me by the throat, cutting off access to breath from my heart, making it difficult to reach for that light of forgiveness and grace and compassion and all the words that would lead me back to love and wanting to love.
And then, I looked back at the quote, still trying to justify my perception that it still couldn’t include me, couldn’t count me among those in its dictionary of examples the way you thought it did. Do you know what happened when I looked at the quote? I spent more time on the words, "drop the bitterness." I had missed the importance of the word “drop.” To drop. As in, to let go of something once held, acknowledging the decision to do so, and resulting in the action of release.
And then, I looked at your comment again and realized that 1) in my reaction to it, I was diminishing my light and 2) because you took the time to share what you saw, I looked again and I could now see what you saw, I could now see what I had glossed over before. I was forgetting that when struggling in the dark night of emotions, I always found a way, eventually, to get hold of a flashlight. Thanks to your comment, I remembered that all those times I was caught in the thunderstorm of a life experience, a part of me eventually, no matter the circumstances, always wanted to find and therefore found my way back to reaching for that flashlight, imploring the company of Heaven as I stumbled in the metaphorical wet and the slippery for help with turning on that light. Thanks to your comment, I remembered that I always asked for help, no matter how long it took for me to ask, with moving through the power outage until the electricity returned.
So, I wanted to thank you for your comment. Thank you for taking the time to share it. Thank you for helping me to see me and in the seeing, value me a bit more consciously.