Something you need to hear
Words of encouragement
Today I want to tell you something. Maybe it’s something nobody’s told you in a while – or maybe, happily for you, they have. But I want to tell you it here and now.
I want to tell you that you’re doing fine.
In fact, you’re doing better than fine. You’re doing great.
All those things you’re juggling. That issue in your family. That difficult friend or tricky situation at work. All your dreams proving so hard to realize, and yet you just keep going. You keep showing up.
It isn’t easy because you didn’t ask for any of this. None of us do. Your parents were messing around and this resulted in, entering into the world, you. You had to learn the names of things and new things just kept on coming. When you arrived you had so very much to do.
And yet you did it all. You grew into challenge after challenge and you just kept going.
Now you’re standing up to your waist in your life, slap bang in the middle of the whole shebang, and dealing with all these endless complications. All of the old ones and the new ones too.
Maybe you have kids – and they bring some problems. Maybe you don’t – and are facing all the questions of the childless life. But you get up each day, bless you, and you’ll keep on doing it too.
You’re doing fine, you know.
Do you ever find yourself looking at another human who you’re talking to and thinking, What is that? Which by implication means ‘What are we?’ You just have this moment of seeing humans as if from the outside and it feels so weird. Underneath all the names and rationale we give to the things we see, it’s still deeply odd and alienating when you glimpse yourself in a body and alive as if from the outside.
Occasionally you might look up to the heavens and think of the solar system stretching out and the universe beyond that and think, What could possibly be the significance of being one member of a single species in this great vast space? And a species that will one day die out too and perhaps leave no-one even able to read the records we left, if they’re ever found.
And despite the implications of humanity’s prospective fate we’re expected to just keep going about our days as if this work assignment we have to finish were the logical response to such a predicament.
Yet within this, you keep showing up and you really act like your tiny drama has real significance in the cosmic vastness and you imbue it all with such meaning too.
You’re nice to children and animals, you stick to agreed meeting times. You text your acquaintances back promptly, and you remember everyone’s birthday. In short, you keep pushing this thing your life forward without the foggiest idea what it’s all for, no matter whether you align yourself with a particular solution or absence of solution in the meantime.
I believe the younger ones would say that ‘You’re smashing it.’
You’re good in a pub quiz; you know a range of unexpected trivia. Who knew you knew so much about geology? You even get the picture round.
You can cook at least one thing perfectly, probably more, and you do the washing up afterwards too.
Thank you for that.
Plus you’re so busy. You have a hundred projects on the go. You haven’t stopped this year except to get briefly sick and that too only for a socially approved period of time. Even your leisure is exhausting and oversaturated; you feel a tremendous need to improve yourself, even when manifestly too tired to do so.
You get through so much in a day.
And after you do in the night a secret voice in your heart speaks which articulates terrible fears you could never speak aloud but that particular voice you’ll never give in to either.
Don’t think that no-one else hears that voice – we all hear it. But you find the courage to ignore it.
It’s another morning now. You should eat a proper breakfast; it sets you up for the day. Have the eggs or that other thing you want.
You know, just this week you’ve already dealt so many things which would have floored you just a few years ago. Would have stopped you last year even. But every year you get tougher and wiser and smarter, no matter what they say.
Your personal growth deserves a round of applause.
Well, this message will have to do. I just wanted you to know, as the days grow longer, that I see you. I know you don’t expect to be celebrated – you’re beyond needing to be made a fuss of at this stage of proceedings. But I did want to say to you, while I’ve got your attention, that you’re doing fine.
Believe me you’re doing OK.
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