New Year. Same me (and that is just fine too)

To be human

is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others…
— David Whyte

I came across this Whyte poem this week and it struck a chord.  This is one of the great paradox's in our humanity - to carry what is hidden as a gift to others.  What is hidden in my life causes me great anguish and is a confluence of shadows, passion, joy, darkness and despair.  The way that I carry it inside myself seems anything but a gift, and truth be told I feel most days are a juggle.  I have come to realize in my relationship with you that the only way to carry these things are to love them, to befriend them, to make peace in all of my resistance to them. Maybe that is the gift to others - but it is a gift that I have no claim over.  You constantly remind me of the gift that this life is and the vapor that it is wrapped in.  Don't ever stop doing this.  I think our friendship has become the place where I trust the visibility of those things hidden that I carry.  I am awake - and there are the bits that constantly seem just out of reach - maybe that is the longing that I can't grasp and will always be so.