Ignite

by Ashley

There are moments when I feel the pulse of life flowing through my body and bursting forth through my eyes, all ecstatic light and color – moments in which I understand I am a vessel for the essence of intentional existence, pure emanation of joyous self-love and the gift of aliveness that cannot be adequately described.

In these moments, I am proud to exist in each precise way that each of my molecules happen to. This includes ways that I normally chide them for being. In these haphazardly divine moments, I let go of the scolding and replace it with kindness. Go ahead, feel this way, think that thing. You are this way for a reason: because without the suffering there is no call to growth. There is no vastness to the experience of my existence, there is only a singular, flat dimension in which I cannot know the beauty of the peaks and the valleys, of the splendid scenery both the ups and the downs work together seamlessly to create. Without you there are no lessons to be learned and therefore no reasons to change; without you I am stagnant and stale. So go ahead, accept the flaw that you consist of. I love you regardless. You are a piece of me. You are essential. You are the shadow of my light. You will teach me many things and for you I am grateful.

In these moments I am whole.

I hold my head high and my eyes forward, taking on the day with clarity. Clear-headed, clear-hearted; a spacious, gracious, walking, talking, loving, breathing vessel. I gaze upon others with a softness that I yearn to transfer through the atmosphere, across the gap, and channel straight into bloodstreams until the softness finds a place in their hearts and settles, content, as much a permanent structure in there as the muscles that beat and thrum (which is to say: not forever, but long enough).

In these moments, my purpose is transparent. My soul lights up and I am aware of its brilliance. I am responsible for ensuring its continuation, its illumination. I am but one shining soul among many and of the many, only my own is under my care. We are all of us spinning in a cycle of dancing, reveling light and we must all tend to our own sparks to keep the fire burning.

Listen to the seconds you are present in – they have a voice too. Listen and recognize your own moments of fiery wholeness. Ignite – come alive – burst forth in your brilliance and, in doing so, light up the galaxies.

All it takes is trying a little softer.