Feast on your life.

Love after Love

by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Here I sit, at the end of November, and feast on my life. I just spent two days on set after booking a national commercial at the beginning of last week, and being on set is always something to be grateful for, more so when my co-stars are adorable 8 month old twins that I get to hold and play with between takes.

But it is not just having work that makes me grateful. It is having purpose, and having purpose gathers and gains its own momentum until it's a wave that you swore was behind you and now you realize you're just along for the ride.

I am getting sharper, clearer, stronger, about the ways I fit into this world, the ways I fit into the lives of others, the way I fit in with myself. My bristled edges are getting smoother, my heart is becoming more graceful and grateful, and I am able to sit just a little bit longer with myself, following my breath with its rise and fall in my chest. My intuition is stronger, I am less reactive and more responsive, my fists are a little less clenched and my heart is a little more open (but as an adult's, not like a child's.)

Give back your heart to itself. I am giving myself more credit, I am giving others more credit, I am becoming aware of how often people do kind things for me that before I just took for granted, and I am here, now, saying thank you. thank you. thank you. thank you.

I am drowning in a sea of gratitude and I am feasting upon my own life, which, incidentally enough, is interwoven with yours, and is plentiful because of yours, and is rich because of you. All of you.

Happy Thanksgiving.