baked-pears:

I believe in myself

I believe in the cause

And I believe in the effect

I do believe

“Sometimes the world feels inhospitable.

You feel all the ways that you and it don’t fit.

You see what’s missing, how it could all be different.”

“You feel as if you weren’t meant for the world, or the world

wasn’t meant for you.”

“As if the world is ‘the way it is’ and your discomfort with it a problem.”

“So you get timid. You get quiet about what you see.”

“But what if this? What if you are meant

to feel the world inhospitable, unfriendly, off-track

in just the particular ways that you do?”

“The world has a you-shaped hole in it.

It is missing what you see.

It lacks what you know.”

“And so you were called into being.

To see the gap, to feel the pain of it, and to fill it.”

“Fillling it is speaking what is missing.

Filling it is stepping into the center of the crowd,

into a clearing, and stating,

here, my friends, is the future.

Filling it is being what is missing, becoming it.”

“You don’t have to do it all, but you do have to speak it.

You have to tell your slice of the truth.

You do have to walk toward it with your choices,

with your own being.”

“Then allies and energies will come to you like fireflies swirling around a light.”

“The roughness of the world, the off-track-ness,

the folly that you see,

these are the most precious gifts

you will receive in this lifetime.”

“They are not here to distance you from the world,

but to guide you, into your contribution to it.”

“The world was made with a you-shaped hole in it.

In that way you are important.

In that way you are here to make the world.

In that way you are called.”

Tara Sophia Mohr from Your Other Names: Poems by Tara Sophia Mohr

Every day I am heartbroken by my discoveries, the uncoverings of the messages behind images and ideas. I still think that people are good at heart, after everything. Just leave me with a bit of innocence to feel good — let me bask in the light untainted. Paint me with all of my clothes on, knowing that this too is beautiful, and our rawest self is not to be so shared. Tell me the other side of the story, where the people were smiling and they won because of the greater good. Tell me that big people aren’t always bigger than me, and small people have hearts too. Curiosity is killing me, the cat, and my dreams.