Try

[Stay tender. Touch a wildflower. Something I love about the desert is how hard everything must try. I see the flowers and bitter brush leafing out and blooming with such effort and reckless abandon, hurrying to unfurl and flower in the onslaught of wind and the growing heat of the sun. There’s so much life force here. I add to it. I draw on it. To reach out and touch it is to touch faith.]

I’ve been feeling weary, despite my great attempts to go gently (which is against my very nature). It’s not the state of the world that I find draining, it’s watching how some humans treat other humans. It’s feeling that brute force on my own soul and taking it. Taking the hit.

I receive my lessons from the sage steppe. I see how things lean so the gale force winds can rush over instead of through, I see the charisma of the wildflowers despite the silent litany of drought, I see the trying. I see the trying! I’m trying. Are you trying? My chest bears up an optimistic heart, even if I was blind, I would see the silver lining in everything, see the promise in most everyone, see the dream alive, feel the pulse of hope that sets everything wavering.

Everything wants the light. Even when it has been told it is unworthy, it wants the light. We reach. We are reaching. Reach with us.

My goal this month has been to receive everyone around me with joy, with care, with compassion — even if I am upended or publicly crucified, personally attacked, affronted by grumpy and frumpy souls. I have strived to reach out with the light I know is in me and as a result, I feel such a deeply rooted joy. I cannot be capsized. There’s something to “loving thy enemy” and “turning the other cheek”. I’m not sure what it is in me that suddenly allows for this kind of tolerance, for I was born with a short fuse, but it feels good and it feels headed somewhere. Upward. Onward.

While this fire season already has me feeling lonely and overwhelmed at times, I am trying to let my friends love me. I keep saying yes. I keep my heart open. I talk. I share. I care. I text my mum. And best of all, I know there’s a greater plan, I keep faith, I believe, I do not falter, I am one more sprig of Indian paintbrush reaching for the sky.