“Remember: You are braver than you believe, smarter than you seem, and stronger than you think.” I first read this quote in the context of Winnie The Pooh.  It made me think of how easily we get thrown off track.  How the distraction of the world surrounds us and we suddenly find ourselves lost in a sea of thoughts and fears, things designed to weigh us down when all we’re trying to do is float.  I often wonder if all those thoughts are somehow designed to help us.  Like, we are so hard wired for survival that the brain is acutely fine tuned to anything that has potential to harm us.  In this day and age that would seem to include our social and financial standing, We fixate on the small things, the way things seem, because the mind is trained to focus on the little things that make us appear weak.  This is the beauty and trouble with being human: we define and decide things.  We make the choice about what is acceptable and what isn’t and we use those definitions to determine where we fit in with this.  I will say for as connected as this world is, it is still pretty damn isolating. 

A wave of people over multiple generations have sought to infiltrate the world with love, light, and hope.  This was often met by people who believed in power and control.  The idea of love, light, and hope is beautiful and suggests the inherent worth we are all born with as well as the idea that there really is room for everyone to succeed.  That idea directly conflicts with the quest for power—it is a danger to power.  So for those who seek power, the easiest way to keep that going is to create competition and fear and distraction and division.  We need to remember who benefits from that: those seeking power with consumerism, those out for their own self-preservation who have forgotten that if we work together, we can preserve us all.  The purpose of this life is so much simpler than we make it.  There is truly so little to fear in this world.  The only reason we fear each other is because we think someone is going to take away what we have worked for, what we have spent our time on.  We fear we are going to lose our place in society if we don’t keep up with all the crap around us. 

So I want to share a little bit of that light and remind everyone that we are all brave, we are all smart, and we are all strong.  We are born that way, and no one can take that away from us.  It’s SO easy to forget that in a society that tells us we need to earn everything and that if we don’t meet certain standards at a certain time that we aren’t good enough.  It’s even easier to forget that when bravery, smarts, and strength all look different for different people.  They come in varying forms and at different times and some of us have to learn in different ways.  That doesn’t make that person weaker than someone else.  What we can do is focus on what we do have, what we know about ourselves, who we are and prioritize being the best version of that possible.  It is up to us, it always HAS been up to us to highlight those things in ourselves that make us shine.  It’s hard to remember to let other’s darkness flow away when that’s all we’re fed every day.  So I want to be a little light today and help you all remember the very best in ourselves.