This shall pass

 I have spent much of the last few weeks in the company of my youngest cousin. She is 20 years younger than I and she is very dear to my heart, the same as her sister. She is a true miracle and no one who lays eyes on her can deny it. Her being but a baby it has sparked a few wonderings of the human heart and how it ages.

One of the first things to jump out at me has been her relentless tasting of the world. Which is to say she licks and kisses everything she can get her mouth on. From what I know this is true for most if not all babies. They bite and lick and taste any and everything. And it occurred to me one day while I watched her giving a particularly slobbery kiss that there was a simply intimacy there. An intimacy known down deep in the core of humanness that the mouth is more than it seems. She often puts a finger to my lips wanting to look in my mouth. Written in words it seems silly but it’s as if she’s looking for where the words come from.

Another thought that has plagued me is a babies cry. It has an infinite amount of meanings and somehow we know them all. The slights change of pitch, the face that goes with the cry, the body movements, it all adds up to this secret instinct driven language. It is a language understood without bonds without borders, in every country and in every creed. All this is true and despite all the words and in all the worlds languages somehow we still manage to unintentionally hurt each other feelings with our words. A simply tilt of a head could rip out a person heart and you wouldn’t even hear it. 

I suppose what I’m trying to say is that the power of our words often passes us by. That often we wield out words as swords, starting wars simply because our hearts hurt. It’s a worthy cause if ever there was one, however the night has been long and I would much rather be planing flowers.  The world has become a dark and hopeless place and we are all still screaming because everyone’s heart is hurt. I could sit here today and tell you the endless reason I have to cry, because there are too many, but I’m still trying to sit in a position of hope. That the night always gives way to the morning and I want to be standing when it does. “Because this too shall pass.” I’m not sure when it will but I have to hope that it does. 

We could all use a little more grace, a little more mercy, a little more love. Because if even my baby cousin can go on kissing everyone I have to believe that this isn’t the end but the beginning. No one ever said beginning was easy in fact from the very start they have alway been harder than they were meant to. But I have to believe this a beginning we have waited a long time for. Even if we didn’t know it. I have to believe that there’s more to this, otherwise what’s point? I have to believe that “this too shall pass.”