Love, love, looove

My brother said the most beautiful thing to me last night, "I notice that trying to squash uncertainty usually makes it worse". My past relationships have gone to shit because of my obsessive desire for certainty that the person I'm with is the right person. There is no right person, only a compatible/good one. 

I've been getting more in touch with my body through meditation lately. Sitting cross-legged feeling one with nature's itchy grass gives me nice moments of peace. I feel grounded in reality and in my body. It's  gradual change. I don't see my own improvement half the time, but the fact that I'm coming back to the present moment more frequently is nice. I'm connecting with more uncomfortable emotions, dissecting them, and finding peace within them. 

My great aunt died a little while ago. I didn't feel a whole lot. I wasn't too close to her, but I remembered her love for me. The gifts (usually amazing homemade Mexican food) she gave me in the sweltering heat of Port Lavaca, TX is one of my fondest memories. Love is not shown merely an action. It's the way the gift is given, the thought put into it, the smile, the genuine connection. 

I want to be that loving person for others. My buddy Chauncey had a cool post: "speak to yourself in a positive way, so you can bring positivity to the world". If we love ourselves the way we want to love others, then we start to be able to love others that way. Love starts within (damn I'm preachy). And love isn't a repression of bad experiences. 

My brother was straight up spittin' fire in our convo. I talked about how positivity feels cheesy and he said, "My therapist talked about how looking at bad experiences can be helpful with the right perspective. Instead of dwelling on them and just feeling shitty, we can look at them with acceptance and choose to glean lessons from it". In that perspective, it's not a repression of the bad experience (which is how I'd define toxic positivity), it's acceptance + learning for the future. These bad experiences can actually be propellers that launch us towards our hopes and dreams.

And I hope we all reach our hopes and dreams. I wish my friends and family well as we pursue the things we love, the people we love. Our little human bodies can do great things sometimes, and that's dope af. We can be ourselves, and that's special and liberating.