I love people. I love our differences. I love our similarities. I love learning from other people. I love laughing with people. I love it when other people touch my life and make me see something in a different way.
I love people.
But I wish there was a way for us to build a giant ball pit just like this. I wish we could create opportunities like this one that helps us to find our commonalities. To learn about some pretty fantastic things about people we may not have talked to under normal life circumstances. This video brings a lot of joy to my heart and tears to my eyes, because HOW AMAZING ARE PEOPLE. How amazing are YOU???
Pretty damn amazing. And I love you for it.
It’s a funny business, having a blog. You would think I would be good at sharing my words. Sharing my feelings. Sharing my opinions. But it’s amazing how many words get stuck in my own heart and brain because I’m too scared to share them. I’m scared of the response I’ll get. Or I’m scared of being judged. I don’t know. I honestly don’t have all the answers. But the more I think about it, blogging is a lot like sitting in an amazing box of balls and answering questions.
If we’re brave enough to do it.
I was brave recently. It was hard to write my story. The story of how I became a mom and the events surrounding that. But I wrote about it. And then I submitted it. And then I auditioned by reading it. And then I read it out loud to a room full of women I didn’t really know. And the more times I let those words fly, the more they didn’t scare me to share. Or it didn’t scare me as much. And then all of a sudden it’s the night of the show, and I sit on the stage of an empty theater and I take it all in. Yeah, I kinda sat there and cried for a little bit as I thought about what I was going to share and who I was going to share it to, but I took it all in. And then it wasn’t as scary as I thought it was going to be.
Somehow, standing on a stage in front of a few hundred people, I wasn’t nervous as I read my piece and owned my words.
I had invited all those people into my box of balls. And I was able to share with them a little story about myself. And you know what? There were a couple of people out there that had a similar story. We found our commonality.
Because we were brave enough to be vulnerable and say it out loud. We were brave enough to share.
I’m not always brave. But believe it or not, writing and blogging shows me that sometimes I am.
And every once in a while, I’m reminded just how big my brave is.
Nora, thank you for sharing your box of balls.
Sarah, thank you for reminding I have brave.