We are losing the Golden . . .

The Golden

I was young and Golden as a child, like so many of us are
But, this mad world can be a constant barrage and beating
(Into your mind and body but never your soul)
A rhythmic and pulsating beating that grows in intensity
As one realizes that his/her kindness and compassion. His consciousness. Her unique perception of the world. Their idealism...
These earnest intentions and beautiful traits are alienating them in this world.
Causing a loneliness inside that is unexplainable and often unbearable.

It’s difficult to awaken in a sleeping world.
In fact, as one awakens more and more, the sleeping world tries harder and harder to lull them back to unconsciousness,
Ironically attacking them for being dreamers...in a sleeping world!
It. IS. Madness.
And if we are lucky we learn to live with this
To accept that this mad world cannot be made sense of.
And, if you’re lucky, you develop a healthy cynicism out of your disappointed idealism.
Perhaps you learn to break out of the programming that tells you to measure your own well being by your ability to “function as normal” according to the world around you rather than measuring one’s own success in well being by one’s own inner peace and experiences of joy.
If you are very lucky, you may develop a broad, often ‘sick’ sense of humor
That can make the world feel more tolerable and connect you, through laughter and openness, to other kindred souls
Struggling to awaken, against the current, of this wacky, sleeping world.
It’s a blessing and a greatest grace to find these rusty, dusty Golden companions.
There is nothing like the nurturance to the soul that comes along with the laughter and shamelessness
That only naturally comes along after living long past your failures and collapses, your traumas, humiliations and heartbreaks.

Life is unbearable until we can accept our own humanity and learn to live authentically.
And if you are very, very lucky in this world you allow trueness to self to take precedence over the disappointment and judgment of all others...
Because something inside says this is an emergency. Something inside is screaming that you would rather die than go on living, pretending to be whatever it is that makes the world more comfortable around you.
And you don’t tell yourself this feeling is ridiculous.
You don’t tell yourself you are weak or crazy.
You abide by your heart and take refuge in that.

But this kind of luck is coming to too few.
And I’m using the word luck for a reason.
Because it feels arbitrary that I’m even alive.
Because I simply didn’t die when I tried.
I developed a healthy fear of suicide after attempting twice, and I lost the feeling that my life was even truly in my hands at all.
Still, I felt suicidal for a very long time after my attempts, though luckily too fearful to attempt again.
The kind of permission it took to live with myself in that condition, one in which I could hardly do more than breathe and pat myself on the back for living another day...
It’s extremely hard to live with yourself in this world when you’ve reached that point. It feels as if you ARE nothing when you do nothing.
Living like that each day welled up so much shame and sickness in me that it felt physically as if I was dying...which I secretly, guiltily hoped was true at times.

Life, for too long, felt like I had awoken into a nightmare I could not get out of
And try as I may have, I could not get back to pleasant dreams.
I could not feel any kind of peace
Not until I began to shed every idea of who and what I thought I was or should be.
And in that shedding, that letting go of needing to know or understand almost anything at all
I learned that in every space I threw judgment out, I created a natural space for love to come in.
It had been easy for me to learn not to judge others.
I had clearly, early on in life, recognized a pattern of ending up in almost every situation I had previously judged another for being in.
I also quickly recognized the power and beauty in non judgment, the way the people around you can sense it and become at ease, allowing themselves to connect and be authentic with you.
What took me so long to learn was the importance and worth of treating myself with that same lack of judgment.
It seemed outrageous and impossible.
I was so certain that there was something terribly wrong with me.
And I was always trying to fix it...or escape it when I found myself unable to fix it.
I thought the world had broken me. I thought I had lost my innocence. I thought I was weak.
But I am and have always been Golden.

I define a Golden person as someone who is pure in heart and intends harm to no one.
You know these people because they are indispensable and irreplaceable in your hearts.
They refuse to kick you while you are down or up.
They refuse to be a burden to others, all too often to their own detriment.
And that is what too many of us do not know
Because the Golden can hide this all too well, even from themselves,
But the Golden are struggling.
They are dying!
Because they don’t want to burden us with their own humanity.
They don’t want to let us down.
They are trying to be angels in a world where we all came to experience being human.
But the worlds madness and insensitivity, its impossible demands, are alienating its Golden and brightest
Shaming them into hiding
Keeping them from feeling worthy of their own healing...of their own lives at all.

The Golden are dying left and right
And we call it a choice.
We say “they killed themselves”.

There is no one to blame and everyone to blame
But blame is a waste of time.
Because it keeps us from creating spaces for the Golden to thrive, to feel safe and free
To be who they are rather than who we think they should be.

We could keep on going, letting our Golden ones slip away
And leave the world unknowing
Until it is entirely gray
Or we can recognize what we are being shown
That something is FAR from right.
When we live in a world that continues to extinguish its kindest and brightest of lights.

- Nyla V.