MUSINGS
How Much Is Possible
By: Bethany Toews
Love isn’t something you acquire. It’s something you live.
I deleted my dating apps. Despite earnest (and sometimes desperate) efforts, they only made me feel more alone. It took me a while to understand why I felt so unsettled by it all. And then one day it dawned on me — people are not products. Love’s not something you “add to cart.”
I’m not looking for a human to use until I lose interest or they break so I can find another one. Relating to strangers as commodities instead of breathing miracles left me feeling impoverished and even further from any kind of meaningful contact.
I’m not looking for a human to use until I lose interest or they break so I can find another one. Relating to strangers as commodities instead of breathing miracles left me feeling impoverished and even further from any kind of meaningful contact.
Modern love has become too tangled in consumerism to be called love. Love isn’t something you acquire. It’s something you live. Love is the answer. Not some flimsy question we keep asking every time we feel lonely or bored. The thrill of momentary romance is just a distraction from a deeper ache. And there’s nothing you can buy to take that ache away.
In January, a place I once called home was erased by fire. Ten thousand homes turned to ash and smoke. What was once earthbound suddenly became airborne. There is no way to make sense of that. But we call our friends and try anyway.
One friend says the earth is angry and punishing us. Another friend says the earth indifferently watches while we play out our own drama. I say there is no difference between us and the earth. We spin together — one big pulsing thing.
We build and destroy. We hope and we hinder. We grow and we wither.
In January, a place I once called home was erased by fire. Ten thousand homes turned to ash and smoke. What was once earthbound suddenly became airborne. There is no way to make sense of that. But we call our friends and try anyway.
One friend says the earth is angry and punishing us. Another friend says the earth indifferently watches while we play out our own drama. I say there is no difference between us and the earth. We spin together — one big pulsing thing.
We build and destroy. We hope and we hinder. We grow and we wither.
How you feel about yourself
is how you feel about others
is how you feel about the earth.
The work of community building and planet tending always starts at home. How much dust has collected in your heart? How well do you know its interior, its hidden rooms, its capacity? As long as you remain a stranger to yourself, you cannot know what you have to offer. We are here to offer ourselves to the larger thing. Not in spite of ourselves but through ourselves.
It’s easy to see the world as a marketplace. To relate to everything in terms of what it can give us all while missing the opportunity to give. We each have something to offer in a way no one else can. Our singular task is knowing what is inside us that’s true. Sometimes we have to go into the dark and scary places to find our spark.
We often relate to the dark as something to fear. We can’t see what’s in there so we imagine the worst. But the dark also contains every seed that becomes a flower, every feeling that becomes a song. What we don’t know is as full of potential beauty as anything we might be terrified to find. We must be willing to risk imagining what’s possible.
Lately, there’s been a lot of end-of-the-world talk. Nightly news strobing scenes of towns being swallowed by flood and fire. The political stage performing its absurdist theatre. A can of tuna somehow costs $9. What can we possibly hold onto?
When the handles disappear, it might be time to let go of the rigid structures. To accept that sometimes the world needs to crumble so we can build a better one. A future oriented towards connection and sincerity instead of competition and control.
There is so much darkness. And so much light. And so many cheeseburgers and giggling babies and long walks at golden hour. There are ducks in the pond waiting to be fed. And there are still starlit skies and horizons we haven’t seen yet.
It’s so easy to be swayed by everything that makes us feel small and powerless. We might be compelled to forget how much we have inside that wants to be shared. We owe it to ourselves to treat each other like breathing miracles so we can remember, together, how much is possible.
It’s easy to see the world as a marketplace. To relate to everything in terms of what it can give us all while missing the opportunity to give. We each have something to offer in a way no one else can. Our singular task is knowing what is inside us that’s true. Sometimes we have to go into the dark and scary places to find our spark.
We often relate to the dark as something to fear. We can’t see what’s in there so we imagine the worst. But the dark also contains every seed that becomes a flower, every feeling that becomes a song. What we don’t know is as full of potential beauty as anything we might be terrified to find. We must be willing to risk imagining what’s possible.
Lately, there’s been a lot of end-of-the-world talk. Nightly news strobing scenes of towns being swallowed by flood and fire. The political stage performing its absurdist theatre. A can of tuna somehow costs $9. What can we possibly hold onto?
When the handles disappear, it might be time to let go of the rigid structures. To accept that sometimes the world needs to crumble so we can build a better one. A future oriented towards connection and sincerity instead of competition and control.
There is so much darkness. And so much light. And so many cheeseburgers and giggling babies and long walks at golden hour. There are ducks in the pond waiting to be fed. And there are still starlit skies and horizons we haven’t seen yet.
It’s so easy to be swayed by everything that makes us feel small and powerless. We might be compelled to forget how much we have inside that wants to be shared. We owe it to ourselves to treat each other like breathing miracles so we can remember, together, how much is possible.
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