“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter.” —Rumi
Everybody has their compartment of angst where they hide their failures, regrets, and doubt. Behind ever-growing walls, our autonomous discussions—sometimes blistering into arguments—defend our questionable relationships, our needless losses, our emotional dysfunction painted up as convincing self-confidence. And how weak we feel when we finally retreat, lock the door, and shed tears too vulnerable to share.
Where has our unity run—the collective of dreamers nibbling on miracles and sipping stardust? So much of what I see is a fretting population stacked symmetrically one upon another, layers of solitude, clustered, confined. Everyone feeling cut off and overcome. Look around; somehow, somewhere, they’ve gone. Following the human grid; the anticlimactic traffic of routine that drains our significance and slows our creative momentum until we stop.
But sheltered within those red panes of a city so close to the edge of dusk, ready to capsize into darkness, your community waits for you. Your people. Your audience. Your readers. Those who understand what you mean when you scream in all caps: I CAN’T FEEL THE SON! They get it. And they dry their eyes with your words, comforted with your companionship, spirit lifted knowing they’re not alone. They join you in the universal faith trek for truth and triumph. They hold your hand as you step in unison toward dawn.
Even if you can’t see them, can’t physically embrace them, listen and reply to them, they are there. As close as a breath. As passionate as a whirlwind. As familiar as the flicker of a streetlight cutting through the extortion of night.
Don’t be deceived. We all feel. We all need.
With a million little drops. Everybody bleeds.
Bleeding In Black and White 