Hey, friend. ‘Listener up there’, if you will.
Got a minute?
In our current era, I am well aware of the value of that small sliver of our day. Today, a minute can account for dozens of headlines, two or three tailor-made ads, and at least one solid dopamine hit as we scroll our way through any possible bit of ‘free time’ we may find ourselves in. A minute is no small ask.
I should start with a brief introduction; I am Michael. Founder of Journey Home Meditation and co-founder of Journey Home Support Services, I step into many different roles in my life: poetry teacher, behavioral and emotional mentor, peer support specialist, death midwife.
I spend much of my time exploring the hills and valleys of the human spirit. There is nothing I am more enamored with than the human capacity for love and survival, despite the sometimes inconceivable odds. We truly are awesome in our scope.
“Do I contradict myself?
–Song of Myself 51, Walt Whitman
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
Old Uncle Walt (Whitman) gives us much, and I celebrate his progenous poems by embracing this very conundrum.
How do we reckon our vastness?
If we are to take his 170-plus-year-old observation as the pudding of proof, we can see that the belief that any of us is just one thing is worthy of dismissal. As large as our imagination is, why would we even begin to limit our own capacity for strangeness, for the wonderful, for the mundane, and even for the horrid? We are beings blessed with such greatness in our minds, and our hearts are larger even still.
It is a balm for a cosmic sojourner’s soul to believe that I am allowed to think, feel, and experience more than I am allotted, and more than I sometimes allow myself. This is quite helpful.
I see the happenings of our world now, and it is not too unlike the times Whitman roamed the city streets of New York City. Immigration was a hot topic for America, as the British Starvation (The Great Famine) in Ireland led to one of the most massive influxes of immigrants in American history.
People were struggling with their own values clashing with their fears alongside the realities of a brewing civil war at home. People were torn apart in a rapidly fracturing country, which put pressure on them to ‘pick a side’. Families and communities were torn asunder while politicians and big business found their opportunity for domination.
We were a country with a real identity crisis. Slipping away were the human things made with human hands and human minds, giving over to industries of an artificial nature, factories, and city sprawl.
Whitman found the words to remind us, permit us, that we are large enough to carry mixed emotions, thoughts, and even beliefs.
It could be revolutionary to embrace a world where people are not perfect, and are not stuck in being who we think they (or we) are. We need not be frozen in time.
We can change our minds and our hearts. And I think that is beautiful.