The world can make you hard. Over time, as you consistently brace yourself against what threatens you, the rigidity calcifies in your muscles. The world is harsh and demanding, but you have also been harsh and demanding toward yourself. You have constructed a set of rules (knowingly or not), against which you are always measuring yourself (and others). That has only served to close you off to the world around and protect you from landing and lodging yourself in the world as your most authentic self. You must become open.

The Spirit is all around you, as a wind. It is a whisper, invisible and all-knowing. You scarcely notice it as you breathe it in. But if you become conscious to it, it can become the space you need, the space between. When the world is heavy, and it feels like there is no more space or motion, your breath can save you. You can create this space in yourself if you just breathe.

And though it does not feel like it some days, you are liquid. God is moving beneath the surface, and you must be willing to become fluid in the same way. The temptation is to become rigid and unchanging, but luckily, you are made of water and blood. It is flowing through your veins and organs as long as you are living. That means you can be ever-changing.

The world can also make you soft, if you let it. You can choose tenderness at any point. You can become moldable again and enter vulnerability by acknowledging your missteps, practicing forgiveness, laughing loudly, becoming like a child.

Breathe in, and remember the breath is flowing through you, as is the blood. It will take a while, but you must deconstruct even yourself. The goal of deconstructing is not simply so you can be left wounded and undefended. It is to dismantle your ego and the artifice it has built to protect you, to find connection and receptivity. The world is harsh, but it is also that from which you came. It is your mother.