Sensitivity is Our Strength

For those of us who sense that change is on the wind, this is a fundamental truth we each have to own now. I was raised, like many of us, to believe that emotions were weakness. Laughing along at jokes and deriding anybody for being "sensitive sallies," and the like. Now, we can talk about toxic positivity and the inherent meanness behind telling someone to "walk it off," or just "get over it." Phrases that deny our embodied feelings and sensitivity to those feelings.

Feelings are everything. In the new world we're transitioning to those of us that are in touch with our feelings will be on the leading edge of that transition. We will have the information that is the foundation of wisdom. We will have the ability to walk with others into their darkness without succumbing or absorbing what is not ours aka true compassion. We will have the tools to cope with discomfort, and help others enter into conversations they could have avoided before.

Because that is ultimately what is needed to heal--ourselves, others, our society, our planet. The ability to look at the "negative" emotions, the fear, pain, hurt caused by injustice and violence and it's echos through the generations and greet that emotion with grace. Asking that pain to sit down and have tea with you and get to know it more intimately. So many people are afraid of what they may find in themselves if they look too closely. So many people are walking around with blinders on pretending like none of it pertains to them. But the sensitive among us, who know that we are all connected, that your pain is my pain, that the violence my ancestors rendered hurt their victims as well as themselves, as well as their victims' descendants as well as their own, know that the way through the pain is to feel it. This is not to say to re-traumatize ourselves or others, but rather an acknowledgement because we know that ignorance is not bliss. We know bliss is the joy you feel when you know the darkness intimately, and it informs your joy, which vibrates every atom of your being.

Sensitivity is strength. It is the strength to walk into the labyrinth, sit in the center of the maze, and find your way back out again. It is the strength to walk with others. It is the strength to know when to fix, and when to not do anything. When to talk, and when to listen. When to act, and when to witness. It is the strength of self that is not the fragile ego telling you that ignorance is safety, that blinders mean everything's fine, that stopping your ears will halt the reverberations your body inevitably feels. Strength is sensitivity to those reverberations and being the beach that the waves wash up on again, and again, and again, and still knowing you're a beach. You are yourself. You're not the waves, and also you are? Strength is the ability to sense the cycles of nature, realize we are nature, and we are in cycle constantly. We are being created, reborn, dying, and created over and over, every moment, every breath. Strength is knowing this and still functioning in a world that would have you ignore all of this in order to function. Strength is resisting the impulse to put the blinders on all the time you're in the world.

We don't have many models for what this looks like in our world today. It's not for all of us to be walking buddhas 24/7. For those of us who know the age of sensitivity is coming it's up to us to start trying to walk and talk like it already exists. It's time to try out new boundaries in the world. It's time to start speaking up for others like us, finding each other, lifting each other, witnessing each other. How are we doing? What happens to others who are further back in the process when they get to see more of us stepping into this power? How do we step into this power WITH not over anyone? What does that look like? How does it feel? Listen to the feelings, and let's find out together.