Good Enough
Lately, everything feels like an indrawn breath. Things are poised. Moments are held. There is something just around the corner.
Lately, it feels like everything is changing—and also, somehow, that nothing is. The past is prologue. History is here in every heartbeat. Something shifts and falls off a shelf—does it break? Does it bend?
Do I? Do you?
It’s impossible to tell, through the fog. Through the smoke. It’s impossible to tell what lingers in the unseen—is it love? Is it adventure? Is it a freefall?
The older I get, the more I realize we’re all just winging it. We’re all doing our best with the expectation that good intentions can smother all manner of flame. But I’m not sure what to think, sometimes.
I had a conversation the other day with a friend that caught me off guard. They said something I found vehemently terrible, and I gently tried to push back in the moment. And while I at least said something, I know I would’ve been more forceful if I hadn’t been utterly exhausted and somewhat…fire bad, tree pretty.
But was it enough? I don’t know. I don’t know how to measure that. All I know is my heart was in the right place, and I tried.
So many people I care deeply about are going through hard things. Things that don’t make it to social media. And even when they do, it can’t really convey the weight and gravity of it. The way heartbreak sometimes sits in your bones, idlily, but not idle. The way the past sometimes comes to call like a ghost that wears your face, and it merges itself into the present moment without mercy—becoming more corporeal than it should.
There are times, lately, where I want to fix things I cannot—both in the macro and micro sense. Because people I love are hurting, and doesn’t love make things better? Shouldn’t it?
Most of the time, yes. But sometimes, it complicates things too. And there are times I wrestle with that. Because the heart is an inconvenient little gremlin. And I am perhaps more foolish than most in that my heart is a compass. A lighthouse. And a tender trickster. Unpredictable and loud.
I think that when the world is a mess (and it is), the only thing to do is care more. Love harder. Drag beauty into full view. And shine as much as possible. Because none of us survive any of this alone. And none of us are going to do anything perfectly.
Perfection isn’t necessary to life. That’s a myth not worth chasing. So, when things are hard—and what isn’t hard lately—remember that your best is more than good enough.
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