The living bird is not its labeled bones*
The truth, sometimes, is an interesting creature.
You can arrange everything precisely. You can craft the story you want. You can find the correct words. You can weave together a beautiful narrative and make it sing.
But the world is messy—and getting seemingly messier by the day. The onslaught of news is horrifying and unending. It feels like my heart breaks with every headline. It breaks again when friends are hurting. When family is. When I cannot seem to fix anything. I always want to help.
But none of us are human duct tape. None of us work miracles. We have no super powers. These are ordinary struggles in an ordinary world, but there are still things that make life better.
I think on those things a lot, often to keep myself from counting out all the things that make life worse. I am sometimes afraid that the tally will be too lopsided to bear, forgetting that not everything measures the same weight. The even if the bad and the good reach the same total, the bad stuff is more shadow than not. Somewhere, there is always beauty. Somewhere, there is always love. These things survive, flourish, persist, breaking through barriers and rubble and chaos.
The world is full of bullies, but bullies are always paper thin. I try to remember that. I hold on to the things that burn like stars, because stars are always a guiding thing. Constant. Immovable. Beautiful bits of light that keep us from getting lost. That reminds us where we are.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
What keeps you from getting lost? What grounds you like roots? What softens your heart? Eases the ache? Makes you smile on hard days?
Is the what a who?
Recently, I’ve been thinking about a period in my life where I felt entirely unmoored in a situation. How, no matter what I did, I could fix it. And how hard I tired.
Again. And again. And again.
But looking back, it wasn’t mine to fix. And it wasn’t really broken—it was carefully by design. I’m grateful now for what didn’t work out. For what fell horribly apart.
My life would be very different otherwise. I would’ve been different too, I think. And for the moment, even when things are heavy, my heart is open and wild and warm, even when things aren’t easy.
There are things I cannot fix. Things beyond my control. Things beyond anyone’s control. But sometimes, all you can do is be there. If someone will let you, of course. But it matters.
If you ask me what the truth is, sometimes it’s perfectly crystalline, perfectly clear. But there are times where the truth is just a narrative, a story, a version of it. There are other times, too, where it is simply a feeling. And that feeling is always to be trusted. It’s the sinews and muscles and heartbeat—beyond the neatly organized outline of what you think you know.
It does, after all, take an expert to understand which bone goes where. And few of us, I suppose, are that, even when we think we are.
[clears throat]
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*This is a line from Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
“You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.”