Happy Friday & happy New Year’s Eve, you wonderful human. 🤟🏻✨ It’s early in the morning.

I’m listening to the world outside — the subtle tune of the birds and the white noise of the cars on the far-away highway.

I’m watching the flicker of the candle flame and the blinking of the multi-colored lights which snake around my bamboo tree.

The holidays felt like they came and went with the winter rain, leaving rainbows which arched across the sky.

I’ve been savoring the sound of rain through the night, the crisp air, the look of the wild sea.

Sometimes people would tell me, I’m just trying to get through the holidays, and I’d wonder. Of course, I get it.

But how much time do we have merely to get through? It doesn’t really matter the season; we’re continually trying to get through where we are and move on to the next thing, me as much as anyone.

Sometimes all I want is to do is make time slow; other times I want to run to the change that feels far away; I want to break free, run out of my fucking shoes, out of this body, out of my mind. All I want is some release.

Our world, the season we’re in, the pain, it’s too complex to understand.

So we imagine that the next phase will bring some clarity.

Maybe it will — perhaps in the coming season, our questions will be answered and our soul will find some peace. But is that what we want? Certainty?

That things will be okay; that we will get through this hardship, that we’ll achieve our goals, even attain our loftiest dreams? Maybe certainty strips our lives of adventure.

Perhaps certainty, while comforting in theory, would rob us of the growth that blooms from not knowing.

​I don’t know where you are, but look around.

There’s nothing to be afraid of. Not out there, nor in your heart.

Try to perceive what’s taking place — energy, light, matter, the unfathomable nature of existence, emanating from the swaying flame, from the blinking light, from that colleague you’ve never spoken to, from your questioning soul.

It’s love.

We’re enveloped in it; yet the moment we’re in feels too uncertain to embrace with all the presence, all the joy, and all the courage that we have. Part of me believes that life will never become more clear than this; I’ll never finally get it, or achieve it, or make it.

Because this is it — we can cherish the perennial riddle that is the present moment. It strengthens us, makes us wiser, and most of all, grateful.

If you’re alive in this moment reading these words, then we’re connected in time and space. I’m here for you, and you’re here for me.

And if you’re alive, that means you’re a miracle.

We’re here together, at a moment in history waiting to be written.

Together, let’s sink into this beautiful mystery. To a 2022 full of trying and failing and smiling and living, unashamedly with our hearts on the line.

To a year we could never have dreamed of.