If our planet had a human’s heart…

I’m pretty sure it would be breaking right now. Our world is full of turbulence. Of hideous stories of cruelty and suffering. And what is becoming more and more apparent, is division.

Division of culture, of race, of belief, of the sexes and sexual preference, of political stand point, of wealth and possessions. Division everywhere.

But all of these divisions put people into groups and boxes. We colour things in with our minds so we can make sense of them. If someone wears a certain type of clothing it represents one thing, if someone has a certain car it means something else.

I am a vegetarian for example. But if my body is craving something like fish or chicken, I will not ignore my intuition. Does that mean I’m no longer a vegetarian? Yes for that moment in time it does, but I still tell people I’m a vegetarian because it is easier for us to understand someone in a box than someone who stands in between all the boxes.

When I was little, my favourite colour was pink. Now it’s blue. Does that mean I was wrong when I was little? Or that I’m wrong now?

I’m trying to demonstrate that we are not one dimensional beings. We are allowed to change. And we shouldn’t be presumptuous or judgmental towards others because they don’t fit into a box we’ve been socially conditioned to believe they should squeeze into. I am multicoloured. I am confusing and full of contradictions and every day I wake up I am a slightly different version of myself. And that’s OK. That’s amazing and awesome. I don’t force myself into any box anymore. I am a Yoga teacher, and sometimes I don’t practise Yoga every day….sometimes a week goes by and I haven’t done my own practise. That’s totally OK with me. If it’s not OK with you then that’s your problem. And right now I’m talking on a very superficial level. Take this concept down to upbringing and social conditioning and it can make life very confusing if you’ve been raised to believe you must be a certain way yet every cell in your body is urging you to charge off in another direction. And then, say you do charge off in the other direction but some part of you craves for what you charged away from. IT’S ALL GOOD.

As soon as we stop forcing ourselves into boxes we believe we are supposed to fit into, we will stop putting other’s into boxes and judging and hating. It’s OK to be a different person today to who you were yesterday. It’s OK to like beetroot today if you thought your whole life you hated it. It’s OK to be afraid in a world filled with people who have put themselves into a different box to yours. But if we all gradually started tearing down the cardboard and stepping into the spaces in-between, we’d start to recognise ourself in others. We’d see that we are all the same confused beings, unsure as to what we are doing and where we are going…but trying to embrace the process.

Yeah.

So it’s time.

It’s time now to follow that calling and leap out of the box and not worry if it means that now you are different to who you thought you were. It’s time to be a walking contradiction and to be totally OK with that. As long as you are kind always – to yourself and others – then embracing who you really are is not going to hurt anyone…it will just encourage and inspire them to do the same thing.

All the horrors of recent times just keep reminding me of a quote, I think I read it in an Oprah book but not sure if it was her who said it….

“it is because we WILL die…that we MUST live”

We must live. Everyday. Unapologetically be who you are and eat what makes you happy and move how makes you happy and say what makes you and others happy because tomorrow will be different. Who knows how. We must live for those who can’t live anymore. We must live because it is a blessing every day that we wake up and are still here. And in living this way, maybe the planet’s heart will start to heal.