LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Elizabeth Lesser!

Don't forget to live

Dear Lovelets,

Many years ago, I met a woman who had a terrible accident once when she was hiking alone in the woods. She was walking along the edge of a ravine, in the middle of nowhere, when the earth suddenly collapsed under her feet. What used to be solid ground suddenly turned into . . . nothing.

And she fell — along with a ton of earth and rocks — deep into that ravine.

The fall took a long time, she remembered, and all she could see was blue sky and green earth turning and turning, as she spun through the air.

Upon landing, she broke her back.

What’s more, she KNEW she had broken her back, and that she could not move.

And so she lay there, broken and alone, knowing that she was going to die.

When the woman told me this story, her eyes filled with tears — but not tears of fear or trauma. Tears of remembered wonder. Tears of incredible love.

Because while she lay there at the bottom of the ravine, this woman said, knowing that her life was over, all she could do was marvel at how beautiful the world was. She saw all of it, she said, as though she had never seen it before. The vivid, explosive, exciting blue of the sky. The gorgeous swell of the clouds. The astonishing gift that is the music of the birds. The extraordinary living smell of the soil around her — very likely the soil of her grave, but so, so beautiful. So rich. So generative. So GENEROUS.

She lay there for more hours than she can remember as the sun moved across the sky. And all she could do was watch a dewdrop slowly crawl down a leaf right above her head. She couldn’t touch it because she couldn’t move her arms, but she said it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Tears ran down her face at the same slow pace as the dew. Not tears of fear or pain, but tears of grace. Because she suddenly understood what an unspeakable miracle a leaf is, what an astonishing miracle a drop of water is. What a miracle a breath is — even if it may be your last.

She was awake to all of it, and nothing frightened her anymore. She felt like she was going to die of gratitude, not of a broken back.

Eventually, just before dark, another hiker came along and saw the collapsed cliff. She called up to him and he heard her. He sounded the alarm, and soon — with the help of a team of first responders and a helicopter — she was rescued. It took a long time for her body to heal, but eventually her spine recovered completely, and she became a yoga instructor, as part of her healing.

But this is what she told me, and what has stayed with me forever: “Seeing that dewdrop on the leaf was even more precious to me than seeing the rescue helicopter.”

Because she understood that fully contained within that tiny, vivid, precious little drop of water was  . . . EVERYTHING.

My loves, our guest this week, my beautiful friend Elizabeth Lesser, downloaded a most valuable letter from love recently about how precious (and, yes, even adorable!) the world is — and everyone in it. Each one of us, a drop of dew. Every single moment, precious.

My friends, my friends — wherever you are and whatever you are feeling — I ask only this: please do not forget to live.

I love you. Let’s keep going. And let’s see what unconditional love has to say this week about what is precious.

Love,

Your Lizzy

Dear Love, what would you have me know today about what is precious?

Oh, tender heart.

My answer is simple: all of it.

All of it.

ALL OF IT.

As usual you expected a different answer from us. You wanted me to start making a list of particular things that are especially precious to you —  particular people, your little dog, the trees, the love you have in your heart for your friends, creativity, serenity, divinity, the smell of cinnamon, the taste of coffee, the ground beneath your feet — and so on, and so on.

And sure, yes, to be certain — all of those beautiful things are precious. And more, so much more. We could make lists forever, and encourage you to give thanks for all those things, and remind you to be grateful, and sure, yes, sure, all of that is good.

But you come to us for the truth, and here is the truth.

There is more to preciousness (and it is richer and more difficult for a human mind to understand) than you can imagine.

Lean close, little sister. You have a nervous mind, but you are not only your mind. You also have a vast soul — a soul that can listen to us, that can hear us.

Lean in with your entire soul, then, and listen.

All of it is precious.

The heartache is precious, too. The way that things appear to your eyes to be wrong — that, too, is precious. The hurt. The difficulty. The unfairness. The terrible losses. That longing — that deepest, hardest, heart-piercing human longing — for everything to be different than it is. All of this is precious.

The pierced heart, for sure, is precious.

The things as they are, and things as you want them to be, and the things as they never can be — all precious.

The madness, precious.

What is precious, in conclusion? EVERYTHING.

Trust us.

You came here to experience life on Earth, and you are experiencing it. Don’t wall yourself off from any of it. Don’t allow a calloused shell to build up around your heart, nor worry or rage yourself into an early grave. Don’t hold your breath or brace yourself against pain. Stay open, stay radically open. Stay alive, stay radically alive. Keep your rib cage soft and your heart rate neutral and your eyes awake to everything, everything, everything.

The day will come (and not even we know when that day is) when you will die, and in those last moments of your life, there will very likely be an instant when you desperately wish you could hold onto ALL OF IT — every single detail of the reality of this world. You will see, “My God, it’s so precious, I don’t want to leave!”  You will never know that more than in those final moments of your life.

What you call the ugly and what you call the beauty, how precious it ALL is, you will know. How precious it is to be alive, child — in creativity, in love, in terror, in hope, in hate, in despair. How precious. How precious it is to be alive.

You will know that you wouldn’t have traded one single moment of it for anything in the universe — for each moment IS the universe, rolling itself out before you.

Not one moment of it isn’t precious. Trust us.

Please don’t wait until your final breath to know this!

Embrace the world with your entire heart, child — just as it is. Be brave enough to really be here, my love. For all of it.

Stay here. Stay with us. Stay alive. Stay radically alive. You will never regret it.

We love you, and love them, and we love everything.

Prompt

This week, both Elizabeth Lesser and I happened to reflect in our letters on the value of all the pieces of this life (good, bad, and ugly), and not in a “smile and you’ll want to smile, let’s adopt an attitude of gratitude” kind of way — but in a curious search for how to rethink the parts that seem on their surface to have no redeeming qualities. This week, please join us in asking Dear Love, what would you have me know about what is precious?

P.S. A note from LFL headquarters:

A lot of restless minds and spirits this week, communally and individually. Two of our friends (who don’t know each other) found that what they both needed was to jump into water — and so on the same day, unbeknownst to each other, they both drove to the same cold November Atlantic Ocean and swam. One texted “Just wade into the water.”

But we prefer to wade into the comments. Because we have been watching, reading, and reveling in the unabashed love there, and we feel nothing but pure and total pride in the way you all continue to build community and reflect back the best of humanity to each other.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.