Trust

As children, we are hardwired to look for safety and for trust.To our mothers, to our fathers—can you keep me safe? Can I trust you? Can I lean upon you as I might upon a tree, knowing you will always be there— protective, providing shade, ever-present upon my back?And our nervous systems receive a yes or a no—and mostly (usually) somewhere in between. And we decide when we are safe and when we are not, and we construct our own safety to compensate for where we are not.We construct the right things to say, the right ways to walk and talk— the places to soften and open, and the places to close.________And then we grow, and we look to the world.We look to our friends, our jobs, our communities— can you keep me safe? Can I trust you?Will $50,000 make me feel safe? Will this title, this car?Will this relationship bring me protection, full acceptance the way I wish that my mother or my father could?And we construct systems and boundaries and rules, ones that we suppose will keep us alive.We create financial plans and entire personalities and beliefs and communities and stories— and we harden the belly on the right side and clench the jaw on the left.We construct bodies and emotions and strides and ways to laugh and places to undress._________And if we're lucky, one day, we realize that none of it will keep us safe— safe from the grief, from the pain of the human experience.We realize that none of it will save us or protect us from heartbreak. None of it will save us from extreme and heartwrenching joy.And that all it has done is boxed us into entire architectures of untruths that are now suffocating us and making us sick.And then, we begin to unravel.And we take off this piece and that.And unwind that story and that pace.And we begin to soften._________And then, the heartbreak begins again.Because we look for the teachers and the medicines, and the new identities for the spiritual paths and the “truths” that will give us the power and strength to keep us safe.And one day, if we keep walking long enough.Everything dissolves.And we realize that the only thing that is safe—and the only thing that is true—Is Life herself.__________The only thing we can trust IS the rhythms of heartache and loss, and then joy and love and then together and then apart.And when we can widen, open, dissolve enough that the only left to hold onto is the messy and uncomfortable and unknown and mysterious force of Life herself—we can know that this is what WE are.We can trust this.We can trust ourselves.We can trust our bodies.We can trust the mystery.We can trust the breath.We can trust THIS.And then, we are free.