The Most Uplifting Piece You’ll Read All Week
By: Timothy O'Neill
Tags: Health, Self, Self Improvement, Nonfiction, Love

I love you. I want you to know that. I don’t say it often enough. You are a wonderfully unique and beautifully realized individual of infinite worth whose essence will echo throughout the halls of eternity. I am me and you are you and nothing could be more perfect. Life presents challenges for us, as life will do, but we are resilient and we are agile and we are wise and we will navigate these challenges with our wide array of skills that we’ve accumulated over a lifetime of noble struggles. We will not be defeated. We will be knocked down and we will stand back up. We may suffer, but we will endure and we will turn that suffering into empathy for our brothers and sisters. We will breathe in the pain and breathe out compassion. There is nothing we cannot accomplish if we set our minds to it. You may not think you are a smart person. You may fancy yourself a genius. Either way, you have the tools necessary to build a life of meaning and purpose for yourself. You have the tools necessary to paint the contents of your soul on a canvas and watch it all come to life before your eyes. We are soldiers. We are heroes. We are sinners and we are saints. We are angels and we are demons. We are our own best friends and our own worst enemies. We are complex and hypocritical and flawed and sublime and unsurpassed in our likeness to God. Shame stalks us and we refuse to give it space. We have nothing to be ashamed of. Every day we do our best to be our best. Our mere presence in this world is an affirmation of God’s love for us. We are alive, baby. Ain’t it grand?

Your mind may already be attempting to dismiss or diminish these words. I would ask that you, for a few minutes at least, relinquish your cynicism. Let’s be earnest for a change. The world is drowning in irony. You may have nay-sayers who tell you all the reasons why your dreams will never materialize, why you can never manifest your deepest desires. Shut them out and shut them down. You are a spark of divine inspiration and you are capable of creating miracles. You are forever more-than. Achieving your goals takes time, patience, determination, courage and a tremendous work ethic, but if you want it, it’s yours for the taking. No one else in this world can do what you can do. Maybe you don’t want to found your own successful startup or write the great American novel. Maybe you want teach 5th grade, write poetry on the side and raise your three kids, and you want to knock it out the park. There is no judgment. It all comes down to this: are you being the fullest expression of yourself? Because that’s what the world needs right now. It needs people to step into their own. If more people honored their true selves, the self that is unfailingly honest, kind, noble, loving, accepting and brave, then we would not be living in madness and social decay. We can do this. As individuals and as a society, we can do this. Our lives and the future of our civilization are at stake. Be the person that scares you because of how loving and generous they are. They may intimidate you with their unfettered altruism and highest regard for others, but don’t push them away, embrace their light. When your true self is finally revealed you may think it is an impostor. That is how far we’ve been led astray by our culture of greed, deceit and amoral mayhem. Stated simply, you are good enough to be the best version of yourself.

Hope springs eternal. We must have faith in ourselves, faith in our species and faith that fate is not out to destroy us. The universe is not inimical towards us. It wants to see us thrive. It supports all the life that resides within it. We should reserve a night for star gazing and we should look up at the twinkling firmament and be grateful that we are here, inextricably bound to this celestial majesty. Someone dreamed us up one day and now we are citizens of eternity. Now we hold the keys to intelligent infinity. We get so bogged down in the details of daily living that we end up staring at our toes instead of considering that we are an indispensable part of a glorious creation that extends beyond all knowing. You may not be a spiritual person and you don’t need to be, but you can’t deny that we came from stardust and to stardust we shall return. I think there is a God. I’ve felt Her exactly twice in my life. Both times She snuck up on me and both times I experienced awe, and I’m not an ‘awe’ type of person. But I also felt awe the other day when I was staring up at skeletal oak trees. It was early morning, the street was quiet and I just looked up at these towering trees and I thought to myself, ‘They’re so patient, they’re just standing there in their stoic silence, so calm and so patient.’ Then I considered the fact that they were life. They were life climbing out of the ground and sprouting up over the rooftops. What marvelous specimens! How lucky are we to share space with these ancient artifacts of nature? I planted a tiny tree in the backyard when I was nine. It’s well over fifteen feet tall at this point. It’s an impressive tree and the fact that it will still be there when I’m dead and gone provides me with an enormous sense of relief. I left behind something that will outlive me. Isn’t that what everyone wants?

Now let me get super-serious for a moment, if I may. I have something to tell you that you need to hear. You are not alone. Did you catch that? If you are reading this and you feel isolated because of the virus, or if you’re alone because of your lack of solid relationships to your family and friends, just know that we’re in this together. If you’re feeling depressed, I feel you. I am too. If you’re feeling anxious and overwhelmed, I got you. I am too. If you’re feeling irritable and angry, I have your back. I am too. If you’re feeling sad, hopeless or downright sick of yourself, don’t beat yourself up about it. I am too. I stand with you in solidarity and I just want you to know that I’m here for you. You’re not random strangers on the internet to me, you are people who are choosing to generously donate their time to me and I want to make sure you get your money’s worth. And I want to make sure that you know that I care what happens to you. I care about how you’re feeling. If it’s a shitty day for you, I’m sorry for that. If it’s been a string of shitty days, I hope that soon you’ll see the light peeking through the storm clouds.

You can do anything. You can reach inside yourself and pull out exactly what you need to get the job done. You have what it takes. Don’t let others define you. Get to know yourself better so you become the ultimate authority on you and no one can ever bring something to your attention that will pull the rug out from underneath you. Be ruthlessly honest with yourself. And don’t judge yourself for anything that comes to light. We all deal with darkness. It’s part of the human experience. Don’t let it scare you off from doing the internal work necessary for getting to know the real you. Remember, you were built to be here. You belong here. You’ve earned your seat at the table. Earth is the school of hard knocks and it takes a brave soul to come here voluntarily. But you came here to learn. Everything is a lesson. The lesson you will learn today is that you are the most exceptional person you will ever meet. People pay 80–100 bucks, sometimes more, to stand in a long line and have their picture taken with a celebrity at a convention. You are a celebrity. You should be giving yourself chills. What a thing it is to be human. What a thing it is to be the only you in all of creation. People should be grateful for having met you. Realize that every day spent with yourself is a day spent with a living miracle.

It’s time to step into your power. It’s time to claim your inner godhood. Our time here is limited, so there is no reason to hold back. Honestly, we have only death to answer to. What is there to be afraid of? Transient, arbitrary authority? A system designed to crush souls? The fatuous depiction of a wrathful God? We are all peers, no matter what the ranks and titles say. We all move through the same spaces, we all want, more or less, the same things, and we are all temporal corporeal entities with immortal souls dwelling within us. Fear no one. Life is too short. Give it everything you have. Push, push and keep pushing. Keep your conscience clear by being kind to yourself and others. Sometimes life is a war and we feel like we’re losing. But we are all one. That is the truth. Thus love is the truth. Thus in the end love always wins. We just have to take a few detours along the way there. Do something nice for yourself today. Something special. You deserve it.

Peace and love,

Timothy