A Recognition That Powers Us All Through The Struggle
It's not easy for anyone, but when you know you are on the right side of art, of history, of community, of business, and of love, when you recognize it is all connected in a continuum with one thing feeding the other, that it is a process that gets better, even when we suffer the setbacks, then we know it is we who build the cracks where the light gets in. There is hope. There are steps forward, no matter how small or personal. Slowly it becomes more complete. Slowly we can handle the complexity, sometimes ever render it into beauty. This shouldn’t be easy. Of course at times it breaks us, but we can also pick ourselves back up again, and are now stronger for it. It is profound and generous whenever anyone is there for us. We know this is true for all of us, and it is all of our strength that grows. It will never be one that changes anything; it will be many, and we will all need that strength and all that resilience, and even then it will never be enough, but we will keep getting closer and closer and really is it worth it.
Special thanks to Leonard Cohen, Vanessa Hope, Audrey Tang, and Thuc Doan Nguyen
This post is a violation of my new two posts per week to your inbox policy. I am making an exception because it is so short and I know a few of you really needed to read (or hear) this. Sometimes desperate situations require one to break arbitrary rules. I hope you don’t mind! My apologies!!
When it sometimes breaks us or when we suffer, I offer this poem by Wm Butler Yeats:
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Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors' eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
That's why I like Ted.