Bye Bye Xanax....Hello Heart

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. there is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there."
— Henry Miller

Well Mr. Miller, despite the masculine tendencies of your speech, I suppose you know what you are talking about. Your words resonate in my heart and therefore I must pay attention...if I continue to medicate or numb the things in life that aren't fun or pretty, then perhaps I'm denying myself the opportunity to experience, and then perhaps to capture with phrase, those emotions that shake me. When I walk in the morning, I enjoy seeing the butterflies and hummingbirds that flutter past me in the park, but I am also darkly curious about the big ugly beetles and their roles in the same pretty flowers that the hummies play in. If they both live in the same pretty flower bush, then they each have relevance and place and role. Who am I to deny the existence of one over the other based on the color of wings, the poetry of flight or symmetry of shape? Perhaps if I capture an emotion or shadow that lingers over my heart, instead of running away from it, and take that shadow and look at it, shine a light on it, poke it, maybe it won't be so shadowy anymore...or...maybe it will get darker and snarkier...I don't know...I've never poked a shadow before....Well, I suppose there's a first for everything.......pass me a stick....