the most beautiful thing in the world
1.
I think the most beautiful thing in the world is the courage to show your whole self to someone.
Even the parts you think are silly and stupid. Damaged, broken, or ugly. The parts that need work. That you don't think are worthy of love. That you haven't yet learned to love yourself.
I’d say especially those parts.
Showing them the litany of lion posters you had on your bedroom wall that catalog your obsession with pride. The jorts you should've never bought in the first place. The mess in your closet. The photo albums of cake-covered hands and first days of school and bad haircuts and the look of sheer rapture that only a new hockey stick for Christmas can bring.
Showing them you're still angry at your parents, for what their parents did to them1.
Showing them your shame. That you're not everything you want to be. That you don't feel like you're enough. How you worry you won't ever know true happiness—even if you get everything you want, the emptiness won't leave. How you worry about all the time you spend worrying alone. How you sometimes feel fat.
But, they're still there. To your surprise. Despite it all. Perhaps because of it all.
Saying yes to all the parts you thought they would flee from.
As you unearth the darkest, most intimate corners of your fears, only to realize they're not special nor unique, and the things you hide the deepest are the most human parts of you. And the fact we bury it all seems crazy, in a sad sort of way.
Only then, you are seen, as you've always wanted to be.
Only then, you know, in the unspoken language of your heart, that you are worth love, regardless of the scars on your body or holes in your soul.
Your secret belief, that deep suspicion your real self is unlovable as you are, right now, despite your imperfection, melts off like morning mist. Slowly. Then all at once.
And only then, true healing happens.
The simple, profound choice is to love someone who is as bruised and broken as you are. Someone who loves you for reasons neither of you can quite understand. And to love them back. And work to make existence easier for each other.
No one can get better alone.
2.
Love is a one-way street. We may never feel loved, with ongoing certainty and crystal clarity, but we can ceaselessly commit ourselves to loving others, and glimpse the reflection of love in the mirror of their eyes.
We're changed far more by the act of loving others, than by the love others give us.
Love's secret, like life's secret, is that it's far more about giving than receiving.
3.
Maybe you've had your heart broken so badly, opening up again terrifies you.
It's hard to trust people. To teach yourself to trust again.
It's hard to be hurt. Even harder, perhaps, to hurt the people you love. To realize you're capable of loving someone and hurting them, at the same time.
Solitude is difficult, no doubt, but it's also deceptively easy. It requires nothing of you.
Relationships, real relationships, are friction-filled. They demand vulnerability. Intention. Effort. A commitment to a state of devoted attention. Showing up, day after day, month after month, with the type of dedication and determination people seem to only reserve for their careers nowadays.
It's simpler to be the lone wolf. To shut yourself out from the world and stand on an icy hilltop, watching the rest of the pack play and jostle and howl in the cold moonlight. To revel in the sweet and vicious pain. Confirming all your darkest suspicions. That you are broken, in ways nobody else is. That your aloneness is a gift to the badly wounded world.
Repeating to yourself that you're such a tangled mess, you're better off alone.
4.
But here's the truth: We're all here. To save one another. There is hardly. Anything else worth living for.
With love,
If you enjoy my writing and want to help make it possible (and get some behind-the-scenes access), the best way is to become a patron:
Or, if you’d like to support my work on a smaller scale (and are also part of the caffeine reliance alliance), you can Buy Me A Coffee.
Either would mean a lot (:
👋 what i’ve been up to:
Another week as a hermit in Newfoundland. Despite the days of torrential rain (and my tent flooding) we've finished building a deck, fixed the water system, patched leaks in the roof of the cabin, and went to watch humpback whales. One morning, I woke up to two moose grazing 10 meters outside my tent.
I'm waterproofing my tent and I've built a floor out of old wood pallets and deck boards. With an old oil lamp, a bookshelf, and a wood stove in the works, there'll be some major upgrades coming.
For patrons, I shared a post with my favorite pieces of writing of all time as well as what I'm currently reading. 15 fiction books, 15 non-fiction books, some poetry, and 20+ essays. It's a list I'll continue to update.
✍️ quote i’m pondering:
Writer and philosopher Albert Camus on the perils of chasing experience:
“You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”
reference to a NK lyric
“It's hard to be hurt. Even harder, perhaps, to hurt the people you love. To realize you're capable of loving someone and hurting them, at the same time.”
Amen, Tommy.
And then to learn to forgive yourself, and others, ongoingly, after hurting them, and being hurt.
Men of my generation loaded our expectations for this kind of vulnerable connection onto a romantic partner and it wasn't until I was in my 40s that I realized I wanted to build these kinds of relationships with other men. Those friendships, once completely avoided by me, are now the cornerstone of my mental health, professional evolution, and personal joy.