This human-ing isn’t easy.

The other day I was driving to pick up my son from jazz band when a realization came into my consciousness. It was a clear and deep appreciation of the part of me that has been working so hard all of these years to simply keep going. I actually felt in awe of myself that I’ve been willing to open to the challenges of life, that I have navigated being human for half a century in a world that doesn’t necessarily want me to thrive. It hasn’t been easy but I have managed to keep moving forward. This is big.

I’m deeply grateful for the people who have…and continue to…point the way for me to see and heal my own conditioned mind and reveal my true nature. And yet it’s so important to own how hard it is to keep opening, expanding, feeling, surrendering, grieving, and healing. This human-ing isn’t easy. I have learned to trust the intelligence of my body, of my emotions, that everything that shows up in my life is here to guide me, but there is also this “me” that has to listen, to feel it, put it into action, move forward, and then do it again and again. 

It feels good to acknowledge how hard I’ve worked. To focus on my own tireless pursuit of the truth rather than on all of the failures along the way. I’ve spent too much time bogged down in how I’m not good enough (haven’t we all) and I’m ready to just say, “You are doing a great job. It’s ok to be a messy human. You are here engaged and trying and that’s enough. Keep going. I see you.” 

Maybe it’s part of turning 50 this month, maybe I’m ready to see and love this aspect of myself, but I think this is an important part of spiritual awakening. To accept the human and the eternal as intricately linked. To see how one supports the other. To human is to suffer. And yet the suffering is in the service of the soul’s own awakening to itself. Maybe give that sufferer some loving compassion today. You deserve it.