I take no comfort in the idea that what goes around, comes around.  For starters, I am not so perfect, and who knows what sort of payback people think I deserve?  Secondly, no one else’s suffering can do anything to heal up our hurts – no matter how fervently we wish it could.  Whatever happens to heal us is entirely in our own hands.

So I don’t care whether the thankfulness I feel for everyone who has loved me, held me, kissed me, waited for me, thought of me with even a little bit of kindness generates karmic payback or not.  When I feel grateful, that healing is for myself, and I have to submit to the conditions of wholeness: where joy registers deeply, equivalent pain may also enter.  It can’t be otherwise.

I love you all so dearly.  I wish there were more I could do today than hold you in my hearts, a little teary and yet happy for all the risks we have taken together.  Risks of love, of seeing, of waiting.  You make me braver, because how else will I ever live up to the gratitude I feel?