On Heroism (Jan 8, 2022)

We live in challenging times. Times when things that are difficult seem to take over things that are good.

Times when loving seems to be much harder than hardening our hearts.

Times when listening to the noise of the world wearies us, drowning out the soft rustle of our inner voices.

Times when easy seems right, and feeling unease seems an affront.

Times when we see difference and forget that shifting the focus will help us see similarities.

Times when things that stand out seem to be both intensely desirable and intensely suspect, confusing us in our incapacity for discernment.

Times when we seek heroes, and forget that we are all heroes in the inimitable journeys of our individual, and communal lives.

We look outside of ourselves for shelter, and forget that here and now, within the strength of our spirits and the courage of our own hearts, in the immeasurable capacity of human beings to love, to hope, to strive, and to support each other lies the one thing that binds us all — our ability to care.

Caring for ourselves, our loved ones, those whom we don’t know but are tied to by the earth and the air, for our earth and our sky, for the blades of grass and the flowing rivers, for the child learning to read and the elderly who need a hand, and for the kitten we have rescued from the cold and feed a bit of warmed up milk — caring makes us heroes everyday. If you are in doubt, ask the blade of grass you watered, the child with chalk smudges across the cheeks who reads a new word with delight, or the kitten lying in your lap, warm, with a full belly, a bundle of softness.

We are all heroes in someone’s life because we care. Every. Single. Day.