I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how short this whole beautiful, messy life really is.
How quickly seasons change.
How quickly humans change.
How quickly someone can go from being part of your everyday life to someone you barely know anymore.
And I keep coming back to this:
Love each other while we’re here.
Say the kind thing.
Make the phone call.
Tell someone you miss them.
Say sorry when you were wrong.
Accept an apology when your heart is ready.
Stop keeping score.
Not every disagreement needs to become a lifelong war.
Not every hurt needs to be carried forever.
Sometimes humans disappoint us. Sometimes they misunderstand us. Sometimes they make choices that hurt us deeply.
And sometimes, we are the human who gets it wrong too.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending something didn’t happen.
It doesn’t mean allowing someone to walk all over you.
It doesn’t mean reopening a door that nearly broke you.
You can forgive someone and still have boundaries.
You can love someone and decide they cannot have the same access to you anymore.
You can wish someone well from a very long way away.
You can say, I don’t want to carry this anger anymore, without saying, what happened was ok.
I think there is so much freedom in that. Because grudges are heavy things to carry. Anger can become a strange little home if we live inside it for long enough.
And eventually we have to ask ourselves whether holding onto the hurt is protecting us…or whether it is keeping us tied to the very thing we are trying to move on from.
There are humans I have forgiven without ever receiving an apology.
Not because they deserved some grand absolution from me. But because I deserved peace.
I deserved to stop replaying convos.
I deserved to stop carrying other humans’ choices around inside my body.
I deserved to put the story down.
There is enough hardness in the world already. We don’t need to add more where love could exist instead.
So love your humans.
Tell them.
Hug them longer.
Give humans room to grow.
Let yourself grow too.
Have the difficult convos when they matter.
Walk away when staying would mean abandoning yourself.
Keep your boundaries.
Keep your tenderness.
And where you can, forgive.
Not always for them.
Sometimes entirely for you.
We really don’t know how long we get with each other. And I don’t want to spend this tiny, extraordinary life carrying things that my heart was never meant to hold forever.
Love each other while we’re here.
♡ Rain x
