I know I’m just a speck of dust but I’m singing across the universe

Hi friend ♡

It’s been a while and I’ve missed you. How have you been? I’ve been okay, mostly. A lot has happened, but a lot is always happening.

My grandma died last week. I was by her side holding her, along with other family members, when it happened. It was my first time witnessing and experiencing death firsthand, which I guess at 33 years old makes me quite privileged. I’ve lost people of course, but never had to witness their passing directly. As strange as it may sound, I’m really happy that I got to be there for it. To hold her hand, stroke her hair, her cheek. To have those last moments of eye contact and smiles.

My grandmother has been an inspiration to me my entire life. She features heavily in happy childhood memories: Her warm, consistent presence. Walks in the woods near their house on the same trails my mother and her siblings used to frequent. Exploring her magical garden while she trims the hydrangeas. Our breakfasts together, just the two of us because my grandpa had gone to his office to work already. Her unique voice, crinkly and soft at the same time.

Losing her has made me think a lot about the ways she inspired me and what kind of contribution I want to make in the lives of others. In the lives of my own family. I’m no stranger to this subject, but losing someone significant has a way of making you re-examine things. Of shaking things up.

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Earlier this evening, I was laying in bed and literally crying from executive dysfunction. It’s a struggle sometimes. I tried all day to be productive, to work on something, to satisfy the insistent voice that asks me for my contribution to the world. But I just couldn’t. First I thought “maybe after a nap”. Then “maybe after dinner”. But still nothing.

Close to giving up, I decided to talk to myself/whoever’s listening for a while, and it helped. I said out loud how much I was struggling to even get out of bed, how something as simple as stretching felt like a big task. And that I was so overwhelmed, because I had actual big tasks to get done. There is a list, and it waits for no man. Well, that’s a bit dramatic. But it feels dramatic in moments like these. It feels like there will be consequences if you don’t act. And I guess that is technically true, although the most likely consequence in this case is that the work will simply take a little bit longer to get done, and I will be bothered by my brain in the meantime.

I’ve spoken about this before - the driving force pushing me to do things like write this blog, for example. How that inner voice won’t let me rest for long unless my output is steady and significant enough. As long as the work is steadily progressing, it’s okay. But during times like these, when I’ve been gone for a while and focusing too much on my own personal life, the voice becomes more pressing and insistent. “Write, write, write. Show up. Participate. Don’t wait. We need to do this, it’s important.”

The inner voice telling me this is important is not interested in excuses or further procrastination. We’ve waited long enough. It doesn’t matter what else is going on in my life, the work needs to stay consistent.

I don’t know exactly what or why this is, but it also doesn’t really matter. As much as I love to speculate in reasons both spiritual and scientific, when it comes to this, I’ve accepted that my mission is real enough whether it comes from myself or somewhere else.

Currently, the biggest challenge is balancing creative output with rest, recovery, executive functioning, and my own personal and social life.

But I’ll figure it out with time. This is all so new. Not long ago, I had no social life to speak of. And not long before that, I was trapped in a cage of my own making. Well, maybe other people made the cage. But I’m the one who didn’t get out, even when the door was open.

The point is, this is all unfamiliar. Not the drive, that’s always been with me. But doing something about it beyond baby steps that I later rush to hide or undo, that’s pretty new.

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I want to tell you about one of my favourite memories: Me and my best friend are sitting in the kitchen in my mother’s house. We are about fifteen years old. It’s a quiet evening, cups of tea and plates of toast in front of us. And she looks at me and says “You’re going to do something really big. I just know it.”

This memory has stayed with me like a compass through my darkest moments.

I can’t kill myself because I haven’t done it yet.

I can’t give up, can’t run away, can’t retreat to a life of isolation, even if it’s tempting sometimes.

I have to stick around to figure it out and do the work that’s required of me.

Over the years, I have wondered what it is. Will it be my contribution to science? Am I supposed to inspire people? Teach someone something? Only in recent years have I felt some amount of clarity about all of this.

But I know, too. I’ve felt it my entire life, since long before my best friend said it. You might be rolling your eyes right about now, and I don’t blame you. But the possibility of being “cringe” in the eyes of some people, or even myself, simply matters less than whatever this is. It’s not about me. My contribution is to humanity, and it is a contribution of love.

I feel a drive to be a specific person not only to my own family and people in my personal life, but to others as well. Strangers, people I’ll never meet. Both directly and indirectly. It feels like my mission, or at least one of them. Offering love, warmth, comfort, inspiration, motivation, permission for others to be themselves. Maybe offering something I can’t even articulate.

We live in a day and age where we can easily do that. We are no longer limited to our small tribes. The internet is a platform open to anyone’s contribution. We interact with strangers all the time, both online and in person. Not every interaction seems significant, but it can still carry great power.

I often use this example to illustrate the power of small moments: You smile at a stranger, and it’s the thing that changes their day enough that they go home to their family in a good mood, or even a neutral one. Without that unexpected smile from a stranger to pull them out of their own thoughts, they might have gone home and yelled at their kids, at their spouse - not because they are a bad person, but because they were dysregulated and there was no catalytic event to snap them out of it.

Every time I have a lovely interaction with a stranger, I think about it for days afterwards. There is even a note on my phone of these moments, just so I have something positive and uplifting to read in case I ever feel like the world is a dark place and no one has been nice ever, in the history of humanity (you should know by now that my brain gets dramatic sometimes).

But if this kind of thing matters to me, then it also matters to many, many others. If there’s one thing the internet has taught us, it’s that it’s never just you. You’ve never had an original thought or an original experience. No matter how niche you think something is, there are enough people on this planet that there are always hundreds, thousands, even millions of people, who are right there with you, fully getting it.

(I wonder where my fellow philosophical bitches who think too much and feel the weight of the world and see the entire universe on the smallest and largest scales are right now. What are you guys up to? Crying again? Feeling approximately 7 emotions at once? Yeah, that makes sense.)

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Doing this on a small scale, only being that person to the people in my inner circle, isn’t enough. It never has been. Whenever I pictured it - a small, quiet life where I contain myself to this bubble of my loved ones, my town - my body responds with restlessness. A nagging feeling like something very important is missing. It feels like giving up on something that isn’t mine to give up. Like the choice is beyond me, because the work is beyond me. Because I don’t think any of this is about me at all. It’s about you.

The older I get, (get ready to cringe again) the more I feel like every living being is my loved one. Like the Earth is my town. I cannot be contained to a small bubble, no matter how lovely, because I know that the world is bigger than that. You cannot unsee what you’ve already seen, cannot unfeel what you already feel.

This tether to “more”, to something bigger, cannot be broken. It can be ignored, but only for so long. Believe me, I’ve tried, and it drives me crazy.

I can’t rest for long because my work is not done. The voice only quiets when my output into the world is consistent and significant enough.

Maybe I needed to experience traumatic things in order to gain this mindset. In order to love people deeply enough. In order to have the experience necessary to help someone. (I hope that’s true, because it would make it all okay, make it matter. A lot of the work I do is uncomfortable, but if I can help you, then it’s worth it. I’d do anything for you)

Everything I do is about being a force of love in the universe, and preparing and inspiring other people to rise to the same role.

I broadcast love into the world any way I know how. I use the outlets that are available to me. Every small thread is part of the same fabric, of the same intention. Even my silly YouTube videos and Instagram posts are about this, at their core. This blog you’re reading right now is more about you feeling seen than anything else. I’m connecting with you because you matter and I love you.

I used to think that my existence would be a highly solitary one, but I don’t anymore. My years of self-isolation was a response to trauma, not destiny.

The last few years has shown me how important people are. Relationships and other people really is the key to everything. We need others, and others need us. We aren’t supposed to do any of this alone, and we need to keep reminding each other of the fact that humanity is a collaborative effort.

I will share with you one of my favourite quotes. It comes from the Talmud and is a snippet of a longer passage which you can read more about by clicking here if this is interesting to you. Anyway, it goes like this:

“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

I think about that last line a lot; it neatly sums up my philosophy on human existence. Whether you are team “I didn’t choose to be here” or “we all chose our lives beforehand” or team something entirely different, we are all here now. Like it or not, there is an inherent responsibility that comes with being human. You can deny it or feel that it’s unfair, and that would be understandable, but it doesn’t actually change anything.

So since we are all here together and we can’t change that, doesn’t it make sense to make each other’s lives a little bit easier? Doesn’t it make sense to offer someone a little warmth? (And if you can’t do that - if making a positive difference is too much right now - can you at least be neutral? At least do no direct harm. We can work on positive impact later.) And if you can be a force of love, isn’t that the most valuable thing you can be?

We are all part of the same thing. All of us, specks of stardust that together make up cosmic filaments. Nothing in the universe is alone, the only one of its’ kind.

I hope you’ll remember that.