THE THREAD | Carry it all forward
The four seconds you took to pause and hold the door open for the stranger, and the three seconds she took to pause and slightly bow and say, Thank you, dear.
Carry it forward.
The eight minutes it took a friend to write you a three sentence note and mean every word of it.
The fifty-three seconds it took to wipe the bloody gravel from your daughter's tiny knee.
Contain this time somehow. Learn to carry it.
The minute you took to ask your father why he is always so generous toward others, and the split second it took him to say, Because I can be.
The thirty-four seconds it took to comprehend the three words your eyes spoke.
Pour this time into a vessel and hold it against your chest as you walk on.
The twenty-six minutes it took for your son’s crowning head to keep a before tethered to an after.
The forty-one minutes you took to watch a single cloud self-alter and shift eastward one afternoon.
Time presses on, they say, time stops for no one, not even you—yet look how it slowly fills and forms into these moments, firm and tangible.
The seventy-two minutes a friend took to hold the phone to his ear just to listen to your voice tremble from across a burning country.
The three hours you took to hike the edges of a mountain meadow, watching a herd of moose drink from the brook.
The nine days stretched wide in between two sharp sudden thoughts to quit hope, and the ten thousand small possibilities that quietly filled the in-between.
The fourteen seconds you took to let your bleary eyes come to focus on Orion's belt last night.
Carry this, all of it.
Fill yourself as a vessel with these countless hours of graces.
Let them slosh and come spilling over the top of you.
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What I'm listening to on repeat: Joseph's Good Luck, Kid.
What I'm re-reading: Makoto Fujimara's Culture Care
What I'm watching: What else but Ted Lasso?
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If you're in KC this weekend, I hope to see you Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park. The show is free, and it looks like the weather is going to be perfect for sprawling on the lawn while listening to some music.
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"To laugh often and much, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, to know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson