Little by little, and also in great leaps, life happened to me, and how insignificant this business is. These veins carried my blood, which I scarcely ever saw, I breathed the air of so many places without keeping a sample of any. In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones. The best thing was learning not to have too much either of sorrow or of joy, to hope for the chance of a last drop, to ask more from honey and from twilight.
We start out thin and green, and each time the sky grows dark, we think we will break, but the downpour makes us grow, though never straight, always twisting for the light, and strangely, the more we reach above the earth, the deeper something in us fingers its way down, and it is this – our unseen fingers reaching for the core – that keeps us from blowing away. Now, there is no more running and very little swaying, and up until now, there have been many languages, though none that could be heard, just a creak at dawn and a moan at night and sooner or later, we are brought down. It doesn’t matter how. We are undone. But stacked we burn, and here the poetry rises from us, leaving wisdom in the ash.”
From: BOOK OF AWAKENING by Mark Nepo
REFLECTION:
Did you have a “downpour that made you grow?” Describe it.
You are stronger than you know -having weathered many dark skies. What have you learned about how strong you really are?