only small
clarity in the clearing
I have been clearing. Clearing my house. Clearing my schedule. Clearing my inner narrations. Clearing my reasons why.
Clearing is a nesting doll of tasks full of worthiness, full of shifting and release, full of opening and expanse.
And then you are there in the clearing you desired and worked so hard to find.
The shelves are clear. The mind uncluttered. The space wide with echo.
And you find yourself empty.
I have found the empty.
If empty has a more, this is more empty than I’ve experienced before.
Everything is vast and I am bare.
I’ve been sitting with the empty, noticing things—what I tell myself, the ways I know to “move through,” the endless lenses I use to frame things, how much (or little) I let myself feel.
I see how nothing is everything. Sure. Yes. This is true. It’s also a story.
Without the story, what is it?
Without our stories, who are we?
Without threads of story, how do we endure the ache?
It aches to be bare in the clearing. To not fill it or polish it or tuck it away.
I ask to hear what I need to hear.
It comes as a whisper:
The ache is the heart of it.
The ache is the witness of the simplicity of the beauty.
I stay inside this story, let it hold me as I hold the ache and sense its fleshy astral caverns.
I could stay here, I suppose. I know how to be still in the ache and witness the beauty. I see how close it is, how close we are.
Yet I know in my bones that to see it and say it is not all there is for me to do.
“What is mine to do?” I ask.
I hear the answer before I’m done asking the question:
Everything can be found in a button.
I sit with this and let it be what it is—true and enough.
I notice the empty space around it, how there’s no need to fill it with anything else.
I see how often we humans add things to decorate and furnish the space around the one true thing we’re here to share with others. We clutter it somehow, perhaps afraid of its light.
I see how I’ve done this, too. I can’t not see this, here, in the empty—
where everything is vast, I am bare, and all that remains is the button.
I have nothing to hide and nothing to hide from.
This is my inner map and my singular teaching.
It is small. It is ordinary.
And it is mine to do.
I trust that each of us has one small thing to do and share in this world, one button that feels most true.
My button is to help others see the button (in themselves, a moment, a community, a project). To guide our attunement to the small. To show how it’s possible to shift what seems “too much” with a simple turn of attention.
We have a lot of “too much” right now—too big, too daunting, too messed-up, too polarizing, too agonizing. And all of this grows in intensity when we look outward, when we search for threads of explanation or solution, when we buffer ourselves with markers of belonging, when we turn away from what we each hold within ourselves.
Yet in one moment with a friend, around a kitchen table, or in a room with hundreds…
it’s possible to transform the energetic matter of where we are through one point of connection.
The matters of the world shift when humans tell small stories within what seems complicated or polarizing. The density shifts when we listen to one sensation of a feeling, memory, or belief. Clarity reveals itself when we attune to our inner map amidst the storms.
It is not an idea when I say: We have everything we need to create a more beautiful world.
It is practice.
And it is always only small.
So it is. Melissa
I even cleared my shelves of small objects in my studio…
Other essays on adventures and lessons from clearing…
part of my weekly Substack collection:
We have everything we need to create a more beautiful world.
Would you like support to…
attune to your inner map and find what’s yours to share in the world?
connect with the potential of the small as you support your child/ren, families, or communities?
facilitate conversations and deep listening amongst the humans in your organizations?
I’m available for workshops, speaking engagements, site-based consultation, and 1:1 support.
