the roar on the other side of silence

purpose.

lately, i've been thinking a lot about this word. i've been thinking a lot about this big, spinning ball of earth, and light, and water that we call home; why we're here and what we were made for. i deeply believe that we cannot pinpoint just one reason...i think there are many reasons why we are here, but i also believe that each of these roots back to something even bigger and more ultimate: love.

we are here because of love, to give love, and to experience love. what greater purpose is there than to treat others and ourselves with love, and to truly find and understand our own identity within the context of true, beautiful, unconditional love?

i recently tweeted on a spark of inspiration:

if you're asking yourself why you're here...here are just a few reasons:

• to end child hunger
• to help drill clean, deep-water wells
• to abolish slavery
• to end deforestation
• to obliterate extreme poverty
• to save our beautiful oceans
• to speak for the voiceless

— k.a. emmons (@lonehawkwriter) January 29, 2019

when i find myself sitting alone on a quiet night, or lying awake in bed, i often catch myself thinking about this...changing little bits of the world by living each day in love...we each share that reason for being. regardless of what field you may want to work in, or what job you may have, or where you've journeyed in life so far, this is a massive part of your purpose. the reasons above are part of why you are here.

you are here to change the world. and that takes love. because in order to change the world, we have to start with ourselves. we have to start by treating ourselves as we would treat a hungry child or a vast ocean crying out for help. we have to love ourselves deeply.

it makes me weep when i think about how much irrelevance we build around life...oh, goodness how we make it about so many things that don't matter. the long, lonely cries of every living soul - of the ocean and all it's life, of the stars in the sky, of every tear screaming out from the ground on which it fell - it's all lost in the chaos of the noise we build up around ourselves. it's all lost in the mess we make. and sitting here, drying my overwhelmed eyes, i cannot make sense of any of it. i've resigned myself; i can only make sense of the cry inside my own soul:

we weren't created to dwell within the vacuums of our own fabricated universes; like life teaming up from the ground, like flowers pushing through the dirt, we were meant to rise and help others reach for the sun. we were made to blossom and to encourage and enable those beside us to unfold their own beautiful petals.

we're here for so much more than the noise; the buying and the selling and the pictures on the billboards. to reduce ourselves to this kind of "success" is like...oh gosh, it's like confining a supernova to a streetlight. 

because when it comes down to it, there is much to be done here, and if we haven't rolled up our sleeves yet and jumped in...what are we waiting for? if we're wondering why we're here, or what our purpose is...maybe it lies in the undertones of those cries; maybe among the rubble and the rebuilding...maybe that's where we find our purpose. maybe we find our meaning in the smile lines on the orphan's face when they finally find a home. maybe we find ourselves in the gushing of fresh, clean water as it rushes from the dry ground. maybe we're in the forests that are left to grow wild, or in the ocean that rolls ever onward, cleaner and purer for us having dove to its aid. maybe our anthem is in the breaking of chains.

maybe this is who we are. maybe this is why we are here. 

i heard this quote the other day while watching a film adaptation of George Elliot's Middlemarch, and it stuck in my mind like haunting lyrics:

“If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.”

true success i think, is to have such unadulterated senses, that we can clearly hear that muffled cry on the other side of silent complacency - and reaching out, we can tear through that veil to find our own souls on the other side; to find humankind as it should be.

maybe our purpose is found in the roar on the other side of silence.

oh goodness, i hope these restless churnings of my mind make sense! i'll write more about this some other time, no doubt in a more expounded way. there's just so much on my mind, it's hard to get it all out, sitting still at a desk like this. i feel like i need to just go out into the woods and shout all my ideas to the mountains and the trees and see what they have to say about them before i even think about writing anything else down.

i'd originally thought i should talk about the fact that i launched my patreon page yesterday, but my soul just wasn't stirred to. i did launch it yesterday though, and i'm looking forward to building a community there. i would love and appreciate your feedback on the page if you have a moment to check it out. <3 i do want to say that i would never want you to feel obligated to give on patreon though, because i love you and the sheer fact that you are here is more support than i can find adequate words to thank you for.  if you're interested in the patreon community though, you can check it out here.

next week we'll talk more about the world and everything.

what is one thing you would change about the world if you knew you could not fail??

stay stoked,

kate