7 Not Easy

This is a post about real life. I am holding a million strands, and trying to weave them into something beautiful, something safe, practical, reasonable, inspiring, worthwhile, functional, and it's not easy. Some days it's all I can do to untangle several threads, or account for missing threads. Most days holding them feels improbable. If this life is a tapestry, with these strands, and what I am trying to build, maintain, imagine, then I say, there are more tangles, knots, skipped sections, holes, and gaps than I'd care to admit to, than I can bear to face. And while I used to find it easier to go back and mend the holes, fill those gaps, and catch up... more and more, I find that the threads are slipping from my grasp, that whole sections of my life are waiting, sidelined, neglected, and entangled. This isn't a declaration of failure, or a plea for pity. These are observations on the complexity of ideas and things, actions and hopes, the movement of time with the weight of a million strands, the unforeseen, the glaring truths. It is an admission of being in the struggle, of owning my weaknesses. I am doing some things astonishingly poorly, with little virtue, no grace. I have spectacular messes. And that's not the most interesting part. The most interesting part is that I still want to keep moving forward, to see what I can make of all that I am holding, to try, again, and again, to step into light, once more, and catch hold of those exquisite moments when something very good makes everything feel possible, or at least worth reaching for. From here, I see more beauty, more value, in a mess, in the struggle, in anguish, or blemishes, in uncertainty, gray, soft places, difficult expressions, hard problems, than in glossy concepts, perfect outcomes, shiny staged vignettes. Show me scars and grit, wrinkles, dust, the grappling, the struggle, the stuff that weighs too much, and tell me that love matters more, that connection, and caring, compassion, and reaching out are what we live for, and I will see our beautiful tapestries, whole, and rewarding. But it's not easy.

With Infinity More Monkeys, a picture a day.