what if you didn't have to be great?

question: what if you were enough as you are?

Dear readers, it’s been nearly a year since I started sharing a series of biweekly essays called Cosmic Junkyard, which have all focused on some of the most fascinating unanswered questions in the universe. I’m continuing this series, but — as change is the law of this life —  it will be changing form slightly. There will still frequently be science-focused essays, but these posts might also become a bit more rhetorical, emotional, or generally rhapsodic, like this one.

I hope you enjoy it.

What if you didn’t have to be great?

What if you didn’t have to change your whole life?

What if you could just start right now? With this air, this body?

What if this body, with its aches and pains, was enough? What if this weight, this outfit, these old clothes, this half-light, what if it was all enough?

What if you weren’t waiting for something? What if you weren’t waiting to find the one? What if you weren’t waiting to suddenly know what to do?

What if you were allowed to be exactly as you are?

What if you were allowed to follow those soft sparks, half-lights, and glints of inspiration and wonder? What if you were allowed to go down the rabbit hole, to chase the fragrant jasmine-scented wind?

What if you were allowed to try the figs on the tree? To pick one, and to get it wrong, and try again?

What if you were allowed to want to be more than one thing? What if you were allowed to be both sad and grateful, to be angry and overwhelmed with love?

What if god wasn’t some holy man far away in the sky waiting to judge you, to redeem you or to smite you? What if it wasn’t waiting for you to go meditate on some distant mountain? What if it wasn’t waiting for you to purify ten thousand lifetimes of karma? What if it was inside you? Like you? As full of mistakes and of wonder?

What if you didn’t have to save the world, start an empire, win the whole game? What if that’s what got us in some of this mess anyway, the idea of winners and losers, of building our towers so high we forgot about the medicines of the earth growing right beneath our feet?

What if the sorrow was medicine? What if the sadness was a song waiting for you to sing it? A song drawn from the very heart of the dying earth?

What if this withering time is a portal to something much greater?

What if all the wondering and questioning wasn’t a mistake but was just part of the journey? What if all the aches and pains were threads in a much greater tapestry, stretching beyond lifetimes, into multiple dimensions?

What if this moment was enough?

What if it’s okay to simply live on earth? To be alive, to be soft, to be pliable, to be angry, to be wounded, to be you?

How would the world shift? What would open up? What would you do? If it was enough? If for one hour, or one moment, it was enough?

What if this moment was the grail? If the great quest was to stop seeking in the first place? If the jewel was inside the deep, rooted knowing, echoing like a bell in your chest?

What if this is where you were always meant to be? What would you do then?

What if you stopped asking the world to love you? What if you stopped demanding to be repaid for some terrible debt? What if you stopped asking people to be who they aren’t?

What if you stopped hoping for a perfect world and holding others to impossible standards, and started working inside this one, with these people, threading your hands with the others who are also buried in the work?

What would happen?

What if you could let go of that great weight — you know the one? What if you could float? What if you could allow yourself to join the flow of something much larger than yourself?

What if you could allow real love into your life — protective love, simple love that’s easy on the mind and body? What if you could allow simple nourishment to fill your days, if you relied on the gifts of the planet, if you moved in tune with the seasons and the sun?

What if you stopped searching for the next hit or high or great conquest? And started to unfurl soft like a flower to the medicine inside your own chest?

What if this, with its bitterness and its birdsong, was all there ever was going to be?

What if life is never going to take the perfect shape? What if there’s no finish line, at least not until the final great sleep? What then?

What if you do have the answer? Not some great teacher or doctor or sage, but you? What if you were the lover you had been waiting for?

What if you were a good enough friend, a good enough person? What if you were allowed to speak your mind? What if you were allowed to exist in your fullness, allowed to play your music, allowed to be not for everyone?

What if you could survive being turned away and rejected, because you were so at home in your own skin?

What if you were allowed to create that project? Write that essay that you’re scared to share? What if you could actually become the healer, the author, and the magician you’ve dreamed of being? Not because you have to be, but because something deep within you pulls you towards it, an oceanic flow drawn from the magnets at the earth’s core and the breath of the moon?

What if this whole journey was about the creation rather than the end result? What if the act of creating, if the giving and breathing of love and magic into the world, was the point all along?

What if you could trust that it was all for a reason? That you’re being taken care of? That you’re already blessed beyond measure?

What if you could feel the hurt in all its fullness and move deeper into it rather than running away? What would it become, then? A great, black-winged bird? A tear? A poem?

What if this is it?

What then?

What would you do?

If this, if you, were enough?