Most of us spend our lives protecting ourselves from losses that have already happened.

I believe in love. And beauty. I believe that every single person has something they find beautiful and that they truly love. The smell of their child's hair, the silence of a forest, their lover's crooked grin. Their country, their religion, their family. And I believe that if you follow this love all the way to its end, if you start with the thing you find most beautiful and trace it's perfume back to its essence, you will perceive an intangible presence, a swath of stillness that allows the thing you love to be visible like the openness of the sky reveals the presence of the moon.

All any feeling wants is to be welcomed with tenderness. It wants room to unfold. It wants to relax and tell its story. It wants to dissolve like a thousand writhing snakes that with a flick of kindness become harmless strands of rope.

Love includes vulnerability, surrender, self-valuing, steadiness, and a willingness to face - rather than run from - the worst of ourselves.

We're always looking for the Big Love, the Big High, the next Big Thing to happen. We miss what's in front of us.

Meditation is a tool to shake yourself awake. A way to discover what you love. A practice to return yourself to your body when the mind medleys threaten to usurp your sanity.

You are not a mistake. You are not a problem to be solved. Treat yourself with outrageous kindness beginning today.