LIVE (Letting Irrelevant Variations Evaporate)

Recently I have grown tired of labels, categories, definitions and concepts. They all seem to get in the way of just being.
At times I found being difficult, but now I realize it was growing pains and never settling for less, which sometimes meant I went without. I still go without some things these days, but when I remember that the alternative would be to compromise what I stand for, then the choice becomes easy.

There can be comfort in finding a word for something you have always felt you are; a recognition, a reflection, a sense that you are not alone, not singular, that you belong. But every label I try on for size eventually chafes or itches or rubs me the wrong way. And so I flit between here and there, walk this way and that way, take a bit of some and more of another. Ever the tightrope. Maybe one day I might fall off and land in the camps assembled on either side.

I’ve peeled away so many layers to examine if something went wrong in the assembly of me that I forgot the possibility that there might not actually be anything wrong at all. Humans, after all, are not measured in perfection, and what others sometimes have perceived as my flaws – like my love for melancholy or my desire to always do better – might actually be my strength and the very pillars from which everything else suspends.

Once winter has come and gone, it might be time to shed the security blankets I have been dragging along, because they no longer serve me. To accept that the easiest thing I can do, the easiest way of living this life, is to just live and be.


“The house don’t fall if the bones are good.”

[Part 22 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]

CONTROL (Chasing Ovation Never Truly Renders Optimal Lives)

Because small steps would take so long, you demand the leap right away and wonder why no one jumps into the abyss.
Instead of the little good things that accumulate, you focus on the bad that has not yet materialized.

Go ahead, say no again, and enjoy the safety of your cocoon. Alone. One more brick in that wall you so desperately want someone to break down.

If only you would let yourself color outside the lines, even if that wouldn’t earn you top marks. You’ve long left school, so who is grading you now anyway other than yourself?

But all your life’s a show. You run the scripts you’ve practiced many times, always performing for an audience of one, always waiting for the applause that never comes. Maybe then it is time to go back to the drawing board, shake it up and see if doing it differently won’t change the results.
After all, anything else has been defined as insanity.

Aren’t you tired of holding yourself back?

Sure, your legs are not as dependable as they used to be, but they’ll still carry you forward if you ask them to. This body has betrayed you in some ways, but in others it has always shown up for you – it’s time to return the favor.

Maybe you’ll find you can grow beyond yourself. Maybe just this once the grass really is greener on the other side. Or at least maybe there will be trees and you love trees.

Enjoy the days, embrace the weeks and let the months do the heavy lifting. Time has stopped making sense anyway.

“Yeah, I know, if I stepped aside,
Released the controls,
It would open my eyes”

[Part 18 of Volume 2 of my “Thinking in Acronyms” series”]