Birthday Ramblings

Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday! You helped make it a very good day! Here's what was rattling around in my brain as I finished another trip around the sun.

As hard as it may be to see some days, life is such a profound gift. The love that we share together in this temporal adventure is rich, deep, and mysterious. It confounds us and draws us on, day after day. Just when we think we might not be able to go another day, love reanimates us. Sometimes it’s in the most mundane ways imaginable. A friend with a quiet hand on your shoulder and a knowing look. A loved one who knows your inner struggles who simply exists with you in solidarity. At other times love is revealed in more sublime ways. Tears that find their way to laughter. Sunrises. Starlit nights around a fire. The unexplainable twinkle in your lover’s eyes. Sacred moments that pass beyond words to remind us of just how deeply connected we all are. Whether we like it or not, we breathe together, fall together, hope together, and suffer together.

I believe we are living in an important and pivotal moment that will shape our future for years to come. Today, on my birthday, for some reason I am intensely aware of both the painful struggle and the immense beauty of how love is showing up in the midst of it. I sit here in tears as I’m writing this because so many are suffering, but also because I see love erupting everywhere.

I’ve always said that if we risk love in this life, our hearts will eventually be broken. That’s part of what it means to participate in the mystery of love alive in the world. Thankfully, so is the mending of hearts, even if only to be broken again. The older I get, the more I see that it’s not so much that love will break your heart, but that it will take your life, both in living and dying.

The choice we face moving forward is not between broken or protected hearts. It’s not even between life or death. Ours is the choice between love or nothing. Everything else will fall away in the final act. I believe even suffering is transformed into love, if not at this moment, perhaps in some hopeful moment yet to arrive, where all is resolved in the loving essence of reality which pulls us through this process of becoming who we will be.

The truth that I embrace is that the choice to love has already been made, both for me and everyone else. I suppose it’s not so much a choice as it is the only thing that is ultimately real in our experience. What matters is that we embrace love as a lifestyle here and now, in the moments we have. Anything less is just like walking around dead. Choose to live today. Choose to love. It will change you, it will break you, and it will kill you, but there is no more beautiful and divine way to be human. The ecstasy and tragedy of existing is for everyone. Don’t miss out.

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