state of the heart

Gravity is matter’s response to loneliness. 

This evident fact of physics hit me several times over the last couple of months. May it be the feeling of a heavy heart or the inexplicable severity that overwhelms us in moments of desolation, grief, and heartache. Keeping your head up high and your shoulders straight seems to be almost impossible due to the severe force of gravity. You can literally feel the earth pulling down every hair, cell, and fiber of your being. Of course, gravity is always present, but a broken heart and the grief that comes with it seem to make us infinitely more perceptive to its raw power.

I think there are two kinds of hearts in this world: compassionate hearts and stunted hearts. And for some inexplicable reason, compassionate hearts always fall for stunted hearts and get broken in the end. See, the truth is, a compassionate heart will always forgive you if you say sorry. And sometimes even when you don’t. Compassionate hearts won’t give up on you even if you give them every reason to. Show them a bad person and they’ll tell you they are misunderstood or lost. A compassionate heart will find good in everyone because it’s their nature to understand and feel. A compassionate heart is not afraid to care and not afraid to show it. It’s not afraid to be sensitive. It still loves deeply because that’s what it does. Unfortunately, with a great capacity to love comes a great potential to get hurt and that is why compassionate hearts get broken while stunted hearts simply stay stunt. A compassionate heart doesn’t give up on a stunted heart easily. It actually hopes and gets broken over and over again before it has to let go for its own sake and that breaks it even more. I just want you to know, that you are not alone.

So here’s to every compassionate heart and the people we said goodbye to, even though all we ever wanted was to hold on to them. Here’s to those of us who still think of someone who’s long gone and struggle to let go. Here’s to the people we miss so much that the mere thought of them feels like all the oxygen got sucked out of the room at once. Here’s to the love we have given over the years, the pieces of our hearts we handed out and never got back. Here’s to whatever obstacle we’ve had to overcome, whatever battle we’ve had to fight, whatever pain we’ve had to feel, to make us kinder and better - to make us evolve and grow. Here’s to everyone who believes in something more, in magic and in love, and empathy. Let this be a reminder that life is not a line or a constant, but a vivid creature with its ups and downs and that all inconveniences considered, you are doing pretty damn great. 

So here’s to life and to every heart.

photography by erich hartmann and me.

the bold stroke

Greek mythology states that at the beginning of time when humans were first created, we had a form different  from what we look like today. We had four arms, four legs, a single head made of two faces, and one mind. What sounds scary as fuck is actually the first portrayal of soulmates or the idea of it. The idea that we were once complete and connected. 

In “The Symposium” Plato tells the story like this:

And there was a time that humans were very powerful creatures, fearless and strong, and even dared to threaten the Gods. They threatened to conquer them and rule in their stead and become the new Gods. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.

So here we are today. Feeling incomplete, looking for our other half, or at least hoping to find something that will make us feel whole. We get lost in this pursuit. The pursuit  of happiness. Some of us look for it in love; some in success and others in abundance. The majority though seems to have given up that pursuit. Not given up entirely but settled for something easy or convenient that might not make them feel whole but less incomplete.

One of my art teachers once told me that the difference between a good painting and a great painting  is typically five bold strokes. The question of course is which five strokes are the bold ones? So, after one slaved away creating a pretty good painting the last thing you  wanna do is make a bold stroke and destroy everything. You don’t want to ruin your painting by being too bold. So, you leave it as it is. After all, it is a pretty good painting.

The thing is, if you never do the bold stroke, you’ll never know if you could have had a great painting.

I don’t think life is about finding your perfect half. It is about trying and reaching and failing. It is about being willing to ruin your good painting for the chance of a great one.

So, ask yourself, is this my boldest stroke?

photography by time.com and me.

every shade of feels

We all pass through life wondering about love. Some find it and some can’t and yet we are all connected through it. Maybe Johnny Depp sums it up best at the end of Don Juan de Marco when he says: 

There are only four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. 

What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for?

The answer to each is the same. 

Only Love.

But Love is not just love, is it? Love is the feeling we have for those we care deeply about, those we hold in high regard. Love can be light as the hug we give a friend or heavy as the sacrifices we make for our children. It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor, and “loaded with promises and commitments” that we may or may not want or keep. 

At the end of the day, the best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.

Still most of us are afraid of it or at least we think we are. I think we aren’t afraid of love particularly. We are afraid of all the junk we’ve attached to love. And we have convinced ourselves that by being cautious with our feelings, by withholding them or withholding one tiny word from the people we actually love or are in love with might shield us from that junk. But it won’t.

After all we are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright—to elucidate the nature of our feelings and affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying.

A proclamation of love is not inherently “loaded with promises and commitments that are highly fragile and easily broken.” The terms you agree to in any given relationship are connected to, but not defined by, whether you’ve said “I love you” or not. “I love you” can mean I think you’re groovy and beautiful and I’m going to do everything in my power to be your partner for the rest of my life. It can mean I think you’re groovy and beautiful but I’m in transition right now, so let’s go easy on the promises and take it as it comes. It can mean I think you’re groovy and beautiful but I’m not interested in a commitment with you, now or probably ever, no matter how groovy or beautiful you continue to be. 

The point is we get to say it. We get to define the terms of your life. We get to negotiate and articulate the complexities and contradictions of our feelings for other people. 

SO DO IT!

Be vocal about love, be brave, be bold. Just do it. Doing so will free you from the tense tangle that withholding weaves, because in the end withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small hearted and it makes the people from whom things are withheld crazy and desperate and incapable of knowing what they actually feel. So release yourself from that. Don’t be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy is for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word “love” to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will and it will be easy.

We are all going to die, so let’s do it with love in our hearts and love in our lives.

It might be genuinely mind-fuckingly, soul-crushingly life altering and i promise you it will be worth it.

photography by li hui