Photo by Dan Burton on Unsplash
It’s easy to feel down, to lie still in your sorrow. It’s even easier to let the world fool you into thinking you have no other choice than to do just that. Easy to feel sorry, to sigh and claim you’re helpless. On a long enough time scale, pain becomes a familiar, comfortable state: easy to stay stuck in. It’s easy to blame everyone and everything. Easy to let hope slip through your fingers, to believe dreams are fantasy and nothing else. It’s easy to lose faith in something bigger, in others and in yourself. Easy. But I don’t really care about all that easy shit. What I want to know is this: Can you go hard?
Happiness isn’t simply pressing play on your favourite Bob Marley song. When life slaps you in the face and knocks you off your feet, you’ll be quick to forget those three little singing birds. You’ll find out it’s harder to get back up than to stay down, just like it’s harder to change than to stay the same. You’ll hurt. Eventually, we all do. I don’t care if you drink your pain away for a couple of nights. I don’t care if you sin so much the Devil asks you for advice. I don’t care if you cheat, lie and fall on your knees in tears a hundred times. I care about is this: Can you get back up?
Do you have enough strength to turn your mistakes into lessons learned? Are you real enough to acknowledge your truths and change them, even if they’re already ugly as hell? Will you wash the blood off your mouth, get back on the ring, wrestle with your demons and eventually beat the shit out of the beasts? Can you stop life’s hand and bitch slap her in return with genuine happiness? Can you show her what being human is all about?
I want to know if you have the guts to fight for your smiles. I want to know if you can hand out your heart to love and ask her not to break it. And when she does, after you’re done picking up the pieces, I want to know if you can get up and kiss love right back on its beautiful, timeless face.
I want to know if you and I can go hard.
I’m guessing we can.