Some part of us thinks we have to earn love, pay our dues for joy, atone for pleasure, and work off the french fries with a thousand sit-ups in order to deserve them. We think we have to scrimp on spending and double our work hours to ‘earn’ a vacation, or put in our dues and hate life for a period of years before we’re ‘allowed’ to enjoy our businesses.
We just don’t think we deserve the good stuff.
BUT OF COURSE WE DESERVE IT.
You would never bat joy out of kids’ hands when they discover lightning bugs or she learns that markers come in colors *AND* smells AND ISN’T BLUEBERRY THE BEST!????
You wouldn’t even consider denying your dog a big bowl of leftovers because he just hasn’t worked hard enough today.
You would never, ever tell your best friend she has to save up for at least 4 (or 5 or maybe 6 — no, 7!) more years before she ‘deserves’ a vacation.
But those kids haven’t earned those lightning bugs!
They haven’t filled out the appropriate Universal Forms For Weighing Consumption of Goods and Resources Versus the Right To Experience Lightning Bugs. They haven’t *earned* the right to watch bugs light up their butts and douse them in the wonder and joy of the universe.
They don’t *deserve* that wonder and joy any more or less than any of us do.
Which is to say, we all deserve it.
There is no one, anywhere, whose sole job it is to tell us that we have ‘earned’ whatever it is we want, so for some reason we all assume we just haven’t earned it yet.
This is especially tragic because most of us want reasonable things like morning coffee, a few quiet minutes a day, good books to read, and to remember about deep breathing when the people we love make us crazy. Plus a few trips a year because travel feeds our souls like nothing else.
What if I make it my job, today, to tell you that you deserve it — whatever it is, and however it wants to take shape in the world?
You’re worthy of your desires.
You deserve the warm embrace of joy and laughter wherever you find it.
Your whole body longs for the ocean because you deserve the ocean, and you ache to travel because you deserve to see new things and experience new places and new people and soak in the mystery of being alive.
You cannot earn a summer day.
You cannot work your way to being worthy of stillness and quiet. You will never, ever deserve to browse that bookstore in Paris in the late afternoon.
Not because you need to try harder, but because those things are already available to you — right now — and they are not matters of worthiness but of embracing your humanity.
The soft wind, the beating heart, the smell of books on the second floor. You don’t have to earn a single one.
Your commitment to your work, your family, your interiors, your depths, and/or your waistline will not pay dividends of worthiness.
You’re already worthy.
You’re invited to the party, and your invitation is the sun shining and the wind blowing and the neighborhood kids gathering their towels for another long day of swimming and hoping the ice cream truck makes a stop on the sidewalk before bedtime.
You’re worthy.
You’re worthy,
you’re worthy,
you’re worthy.
You deserve to be here. You deserve to be alive. You deserve to do the divine dance of living on this planet.
You deserve joy and wonder and delight not because you’ve put in your time or earned your points or have sheer-undiluted-slog currency to trade in for something better.
You deserve the best of life simply because you’re breathing, and you’re allowed to keep breathing by the grace of we-know-not-what for another day.
You’re allowed to take up space.
You’re allowed to want more.
You’re allowed to let life be simpler and fuller and richer than you can possibly imagine.
You’re allowed.
Period, full stop, end of story.
You’re allowed.
That means you’re allowed to sense the sparkle, hold the sale, quit the Facebook, make a marketing calendar, call to the deep, embrace your introverted nature, or reclaim your energy right this minute.
That means you don’t have to double your income or triple your business before you ‘deserve’ the workshop or the break.
That means you can write the book or give an alpaca an ice cream cone or read some poetry right this second, just because.
You’re allowed. And you deserve it.
With all my love —
K