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I am here to be soft












Today, an angel walked by, dressed as an elderly lady in a maroon beret. She smiled right into my dramatic spat with my lover in the park and said, "Have you had breakfast yet? It's a beautiful day." And I hid my face and wept.

Even when I am in pain, and my world is falling apart, these things hold true. Have your breakfast. It is a beautiful day.

I am here to be soft. 

To be crushed, and like mossy sponge, spring back to life. But stronger, more complex, more resilient each time.

My strength is that I am resilient. I always come back. It is this way for the soft ones in the world. Some buckle under the eternal pressure. Some rise again. I rise again, over and over. In my own way. My rising belongs to me.

Every hard thing that my softness comes into contact with becomes softer, though I may get bruised in the process.

This is why flowers and mosses enthral me.

Each expression of life in this great pulsating tapestry has something unique to say.

One says 'I am here'

One says 'I bend'

One - I stay

One - flow

One - go

One - break

One - crash

All together in the cyclical dance of the seasons

Come, go, change

Birth, die

Breathe, tear

Change colour, odour, metamorphosize into a thing entirely new.

I am drawn to the soft, delicate ones: flowers, moss, butterflies, leaves, tiny birds.

The flower may live for only a day, may be easily crushed. But its immutability is such that it pushes up through a cement sidewalk. It will always find a way to live, and show its face to the sun.

Moss, though soft, grows in such a way that it could take over the entire surface of the earth and envelope everything in a timeless green.

Butterflies. A paper thin miraculous beauty, whose wing flapping can influence the formation of a tornado. Piercing through the illusion of time and space. Born from a dark cocoon.

Leaves - the maple leaf for one. It is just as beautiful in its crunchy red death as it is in its vibrant green life. It falls willingly, gracefully from the tree branch at the appointed time in the season to de- matter into the earth and continue the cycle.

Tiny birds - delicate, quick, flittery, shirred up feathers and fluff. A quick song, and short life. An eternal calling in of beauty on spring mornings. And then their little bones become earth - become flowers - become moss, butterflies, cycles, All.

I am soft and permanent like all of these ones.

I am eternal, and cyclical, and free.

I am here to be soft. This turns out to be my greatest strength and my greatest gift.

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