There was a time, when you were running, that you glimpsed at the world around you and saw beauty in every direction. To your left, crops swayed gently in the breeze, and, to your right, a warm brick home sat amicably on a grassy knoll. Ahead of you, the morning sun peeked over the horizon, spilling golden rays onto all the everything. Lifting your arms into wings, you closed your eyes and basked, for a moment, in your existence.
This is you at your most yourself, reader. Joyful, hopeful, aspiring, and marked by wild gratitude.
To get here, to find yourself at this point, you will have to take a variety of steps. Now that we’ve reached the final section, we’d like to reiterate them to ensure you’ve properly reconstructed your broken heart:
You will need to learn to run again. When you set out before, when you chased after what you wanted, closed your eyes, and stopped counting your steps, you tripped. Your body was pulled to the earth, your hands and knees scraping against cold, cruel pavement. Your Heart was startled, your Mind rushing to compute: This is not what we’d calculated for! And so you hobbled onto your feet, onto wobbly legs, and took stubborn-ass steps.
Your first few steps of running again will, of course, be tentative. You won’t be sure your limbs are okay, and your Mind will find you scanning the horizon for pitfalls. Not on my watch, your Mind will say to itself, protecting your healing Heart from another jolt.
But, eventually, you will need to trust yourself again, to close your eyes, lift your head, and let your arms be wings. Yes, this will find you vulnerable, but, my God, you will discover you have missed this joy.
You will need to believe in it again, the beauty of it, the light in every direction. You will need to seek meaning from every corner of the world, to make mountains out of molehills, to continue deriving incredible significance out of ‘meaningless things,’ and to apologize for none of that.
To lift your arms, to truly allow them to expand, you will have to believe you deserve to expand, to stretch your limbs so emphatically in every direction that your being perpetuates love in supernovas around you. You will need to expand, expand, expand, until you’re no longer willing to give yourself over to anybody who asks you to shrink.
You will need to trust them, your words, and the role they can play in the stitching and the unstitching. You will need to believe in your strength, in the light that you uniquely bring.
In order for your fingers to know the breeze, they cannot hold onto what came before, onto heavy things like why somebody left when you were so willing to stay, and so you will need to be sure they are empty, cleared by forgiveness and acceptance and the summer winds.
Your eyes must be fixed on the horizon, no longer searching for love where it does not dwell, and your Heart must be at the helm of your existence, calming your restless Mind and paving your way forward with reckless, breathless courage.
A closing note: Sounding like yourself again, aren’t you? It seems that you’ve made it, shed what you needed to shed.
Well, we’re glad to hear it. No, no –– we’re okay. We’re just, well, we’re glad to have been with you through it.
Brave travels, reader. We’ll be here again if you need us, so w –– okay, enjoy the run! Congratulations on doing it, transforming those scars into stars.
michael king 