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She was everything I wanted in a mother. She was an unbiased ear, the type of hug that made the world appear calm. She was true beauty, elegance, compassion, and lived wisdom. She gave comfort to anyone who needed it, she cared deeply for her children, more than they will ever know. She knew what her children needed and she offered it freely, expecting nothing in return. She lead with her heart, she did not judge, she did not criticize, she lived the life she wanted her children to follow. She loved entirely and truly, in a way that few people witness. She saw souls before she saw faces. And she is gone, but in many ways she isn’t. She is here. In all of her children, she is here. They carry her legacy, and they build upon it. If they only they could see how lucky they are, for in their loss means they had it in the first place.
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Attempting to fix the soul through building the body will only lead to failure. In order to perfect the body, we must start with the soul. Otherwise, you’ll build the body. And keep building the body. And keep building the body. Until everything collapses. And then you’ll realize the perfect body does not exist at all. And we begin again with only the soul. Now, there is no doubt the body and the soul are inextricably connected. It is simply a matter of tending to the soul before venturing to the body. Furthermore, it is simply a matter of realizing we leave this place with only our soul, and not our body.
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You pick up a book, never to pick it up again. Never to finish it before you find a new one. You find a new hobby, one that is sure to satisfy your discontentment. One that is the missing piece to the puzzle that is finally finding fulfillment. Until it isn’t, and you’re onto the next. You make enough money to begin the life you always wanted, and then you realize you want one that requires more. You conspire a plan at 1:00am that will change everything, that will fix all of your problems, only to forget it when the sun comes up. Until one early morning, you realize there is nothing to change, there is only life. A life that is meant to be lived fully, not criticized nor changed, only experienced. A life that we are only meant to witness with new eyes each day.
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One random morning you’ll wake up and realize you did it, you grew up. You became an adult, one you hardly recognize, and certainly not the one you once dreamt you’d become. In some ways your better, in others you’re lacking. But you’re here. And then you wish you could go back and see the world through the eyes of your childhood self.
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He does not know how he dulls his own soul. He does not know how he inhibits mine. But then, somedays, his soul shines unlike anything I’ve ever seen. And on those days, mines free, freer than it could ever be otherwise.
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Why does it seem as though the people that mean the most to us leave before their story feels finished? Why does catastrophe follow some of us more than others? For those of us that calamity seems to cling to, are we the ones that can bear it, or are we simply unlucky? Perhaps, we are somehow the lucky ones, because once you are broken, only then can you know what it means to truly live. Only then can you understand what being rich actually means, and we are spared a lifetime of chasing the wrong riches.
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When you allow yourself to feel after years of self-induced numbness, life shows its beauty to you, and, in the same breath, becomes nearly unbearable. You become a sponge for all of the joy and the pain in the world, or so it seems. And somehow, tragedy strikes the moment you decide to not run from the pain anymore. These are the moments that test our souls. These are the moments that remind us what it means to be human.
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One day you’ll walk through a doorway that you can’t walk back through. You’ll wake up and see the falsehood all around you. You’ll notice the man in the suit knows no more about being human than the child in the mud. Perhaps less, even. You’ll recognize the lack of authenticity in your own actions, how your words have become a medium for appeasing. The world will appear counterfeit. But you will feel anew, and a sense of certainty in the surrender of everything you once held to be true.
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If you are not careful, you will begin to long. You’ll begin to long like I do, for places and people I shouldn’t. But, I am reminded in the absence of longing is not peace, nor is it contentment. Rather the absence of longing is merely a moment without a muse.
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I often feel alone, entirely alone with my own need for control. I have an aversion to letting the complexity of the human experience show me its colors. Instead, I prefer to see the pleasant pastels that are easy to see, easy to love.