The Raw Beauty of Life

"You are like a leaf blowing around in the eye of a hurricane.

Life has really landed on you.

It's amazing to see how you carry it."

-Ryan Hartley







Life is like a dark night, and a star-lit soul peering into a jar of fireflies. We are free and bound at the same time. 


It is the collected moments that you are present to, which create a beautiful life. 

Observing the steam rise in curls from a mug of green tea, the pattern of sunlight streaming through a leaf, the warmth of someones lips on yours, the crinkle at the corner of the eyelids in a child's smile, the moment you jump into a cold lake. 

This is life. 

And yes - the moments where you are curled up in a ball on the floor, your body heaving with sobs. The moments where you are called out. The dark parts of yourself that you encounter, and choose to integrate. The times you see someone doing something you wish you were doing and feel jealous.

Life is not a tea party that we dress up for and play. It is real and raw. It is shitty and scary sometimes. And it is achingly beautiful and magical sometimes.

Some people shelter themselves as much as they can. Some jump right into the heart of it (ie. a photojournalist who documents the top places of conflict in the world.) Most of us are somewhere in the middle.

Some have no choice. They are born into a war-torn or colonized country. Some are born into privilege and use this to cause suffering. Some use their privilege to cause positive change.

Look at life as it is. Real. Raw. Full. And just be in it.

Every day we have the choice to live in love, or live in fear.

This choice is influenced by our circumstances, where we live, who we are, and how we've been shaped by our life experiences.

But at our core, essentially every human is the same. We want to be loved and accepted. We want to be safe and free. We suffer. We either choose to pass our suffering forward to others, or to heal and grow.

Fucked-up shit happens every day. I recently listened to a  CBC podcast in which a mother was interviewed whose daughter had been shot at Sandy Hook. A child shot by a child.

Ten years ago there was a shooting at my college in Montreal. 19 students were shot, and one girl died. This event radically changed the entire trajectory of my life. I grappled with fear, sadness, and darkness for a long time.

My journey has been to learn to choose love over fear. Today - now - I make every effort to not live my life in fear.

I have traveled all over the world. I have been in the slums of India, Africa, and Mexico and seen the incredible beauty and strength of the human spirit in the most desperate places.

Every human has the choice to love, or to fear. Every day, every moment.

Whether we are in the eye of the storm, or a field of wildflowers on a summer's day, we can be certain that we will experience both. And everything in between. 

This is life. It is real and raw. And hard and messy, and beautiful. Vibrant and emotional.

The great, pulsating beauty and joy of life also encompasses suffering.

It is ever rising and falling, like the ocean waves.

Shape-shifting, like the wind blown clouds in the sky.

Surprising, like a colour soaked rainbow in the grey, wet sky after rain.

Life is the delicate, indescribably wild and rich meadow flower, that lives for a day, and then wilts back into the earth.

Life is the tall, deeply rooted fir tree, who has stood strong for thousands of years, and seen three thousand moon cycles come and go.

Life is conflict. Life is love. It is wounding. It is ecstasy.

The safest and sanest way that I have found to meet life is to open to all that it is. Be in it. In all its messy, inconvenient glory.

The teenage mother. The child with down's syndrome. The next female scientist who will find a cure for some rare disease. The jungle shaman keeping the ways of his people alive so that the earth can be preserved and healed.

Life is too complex to have parts of it labelled 'good', and parts 'bad'. IT IS.

At the end of my life I would like to say - I found myself caught in the raw beauty of life, and I lived it.