Find the Crack in the Door and Push it Wide Open

Your value is absolute.

Hello Beautifuls!

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This picture of me and my Caly has nothing and everything to do with this post. She was my best teacher, especially in joy, breathing deep and giving zero f###s about comparison. Unless we’re talking sticks, and then, well, the bigger the better.

Well Lovelies, I wasn’t clear on what I wanted to share with you today, so I started writing the way I sometimes do, just to get the words going, by saying what is true, what is happening, what is right in front of me. And then the thing that wants to come through can find that crack in the door and push it wide open.

I don’t usually share the ramp up to the thing, but today it seemed like a fun way to start. Because this whole thing is about comparison, which is about perfectionism, which is about doing it right. All the time. And I am so over that. I want my energy back for enjoying being alive. So here you go, my loves.

I don’t know what to write today.

I woke up and didn't feel anxious, so that's a thing. 

I Googled moving to Canada, because it showed me a picture of Edmonton, and well, just in case.

Also, I’ve been having this recurring dream lately where I’m staying somewhere unfamiliar, someone’s house or a hotel or Airbnb and where we either go to a party or have a party, and where I am awake far, far later than normal, and all of a sudden the sun is coming up, and I am surprised and a bit dismayed that I stayed up all night.

And then I wake up.

What is that all about?

Maybe my mind is letting go of some of the rules I’ve lived with all my life. The rules to keep me safe, to keep me moving through the days even though I was scared most of the time. But I’m more curious these days than scared, which is such a relief, which is such an understatement. However, I still hold onto comparison. Like a freaking life raft and I can’t see the shore.

So there it is, the crack in the door I was looking for.

I struggle with comparison. I know for many people their comparison shows up in academic or career accomplishment, or physically challenging their bodies, or outright competition in sports or other games. 

Mine is around wealth and security. After college, I didn't stick around for the MFA, I got in a truck and drove around Central America for a year instead. I didn't, in my mid-20s, come back to California and get a job at Apple or Yelp or Microsoft or eBay, like so many of my friends, instead I stayed down south and started a jewelry business in a hot apartment in Costa Rica. 

Many, many people I know are multimillionaires. Not just randoms like the guy who pulled up in his too red Ferrari and parked it in front of the door at the local coffee shop on Sunday morning. I mean people I'm really close to. I am not a multimillionaire. I'm not even a single millionaire. And there is a part of me that feels very very bad about that. Very failed. 

I don't really care about the money so much, though I do like pretty things. I care about the security I think it would bring, about how it would say I did it right. I played the game and I won. I feel my lack of it calls out what I didn't do. How I didn't prepare for the years after 50 by staying put and getting a job and now have stocks that have split a couple of times and a retirement portfolio to show for it. 

But then, this morning, I read Kelly Flannagan's post and it was exactly what I needed to hear, and I thought it might be just what you needed today too. He shared his Letter from Love on value and here is a bit of what Love said to him:

A single golden leaf, rocking gently toward the ground in an autumn forest, unseen by a single human eye, is thoroughly ordinary, and utterly beautiful. You think you need to be a grand oak tree, towering over the rest of the forest, a tourist destination. But that’s just a game you made up. You, my fleeting friend, are but a single golden leaf, rocking gently toward the ground of your existence.

Are you valuable? Wrong question.

Are you beautiful? Without question.

Without question. I could benefit from not questioning myself so much, not second guessing my decisions and standing them up, side by side, next to what others chose to do with their lives.

Would I change some things? Yes. Would I change all the things? No. And besides, none of it can be changed, only the way I see it, only the way I chose to think about it, to believe in my own story. Because I’m the only one who gets to create that story. And I’m ready to retell it.

Kelly goes on to say:

The shame game, or the worthiness game, or the identity game. The marriage game, or the dating game, or the singlehood game. The career game, or the entrepreneurial game, or the leaving-a-legacy game. It just doesn't exist. We made it up a long time ago to compensate for the pain of being a vulnerable little one amongst other human beings who were also in process.

You can’t win a game that never even started.

But you can do something even better.

You can be free of it.

Yes. That’s exactly it. What I want to give myself is the freedom to say I love my whole life. Not just some parts of it. The freedom, the allowance, to love all my decisions, not just the ones that seemed good or right.

My Letter from Love, written the same week as Kelly’s, on the same theme, speaks of our absolute value, of how there is no getting more or less valuable as we move through this experience in these gorgeous, flawed, aging bodies. 

That is what I want to write about today, what I want to say to you and to myself. There’s no game here. There’s just learning to love ourselves the way we wanted to be loved our whole lives.

My own Letter from Love on value:

Dear Love, what would you have me know today about my value?

Whew. This feels like a big question to us, not for us, but for you. 

Little armadillo, you are, by no doing of your own sweet spirit, wrapped up in value equations, not just about your own value, but that of everything else in this tangible world. 

Your value, my dove, is immeasurable, vast, inexorable, infinite. And actually, sweet pea, there is no such thing as value. Humans have made the concept up, in order to create power structures, and not just with people, with everything. But that's not what we want to talk about this morning.

Since you ask, specifically, about your value, if we want to call it that, which we don't, because it's not a thing, your value is you. All of you. Every moment of your time here is your value. And as such, it cannot be more or less than anyone else's value. Your value is intrinsic. It is beyond vast and infinite. It cannot be taken from, or added to. It is absolute. Your value is absolute, my love. Shall I say it again? Your value is absolute.

I know you think that if you had kept up with your writing and publishing right after college that you would be somewhere now with all of that, that you would have this career that you think would make you different and yes, better. We want to cry over this, my love, because you couldn't be any better, you can't get any more perfect. There is nothing you can ever do to make yourself more valuable, because your value is already set and done and infinite. 

So my love, my sweet, stubborn, trying turtle, we want you to rest. We want you to spend time feeling this absolute value in your bones. Go walking among the trees and see their value, each and every one of them, you know they are equally and amazingly valuable. You are the same, my dove. Spend time in the water and know it is sacred, just because it exists. You are the same, little salmon.

You cannot generate more value by doing something, or generate less by not doing something, so my love, my sweet, sweet love, please just stop. Stop trying to be anything better or more and start knowing that you are everything to us, to the universe, to your true self, the one who lives as a light inside your human body.

It is time for you to know your value, that it is undiminishable, undimmable, untouchable, that you belong, to yourself, to us, to the stars and the moon and the rain and the desert. It is time for you to start living as if you are the most valuable thing (like every other natural thing) in the universe. 

We love you, 

Love

I hope this resonated with you this morning. Because this message isn’t just for me. It’s for all of us.

You can read

Kelly Flanagan

’s whole post here.

And if you’re not over in Letters from Love, it’s a beautiful space and you can find it here.

I was also reminded, while writing about comparison, of Shel Silverstein’s poem Hug ‘O War.

Hug O'War

I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins.

Sending you all so much love.

xo,

j