No participation trophies for life

No one will give you a participation trophy for life.

You aren’t going to get all your followers checking in on you to see how you’re doing after a devastating loss.

Sure you may get a few. Maybe even a few hundred.

But after a while, the struggles and challenges and pain you experienced will be left to be handled, solely, by you and you alone.

No matter how desperately you want to be acknowledged for what you’ve gone through.

No matter how much you want to be recognized for how far you’ve come.

Ultimately…

No one will celebrate that journey if you are not out there beating yourself own goddamn drum, praising and chanting your stories into the culture of your community to serve those who are currently going through what you have gone through.

It is 100000% up to you to use those experiences to serve.

Because through the grief of what was, your ego will pop up 10,000 times begging to be recognized for its solitary struggle.

That’s the ego’s job, after all.

It likes to weave those stories of solitary triumph over your past world into the web of its prison to keep you trapped in your safe smallness.

Instead of using that pain, that suffering that struggle to strengthen you to serve the masses with your power, with the light that you have forged through the dark, rubbing god-knows-what together to just get through the night. 

I can’t promise you that your struggles will serve thousands or even hundreds, giving your ego the acknowledgment and validation it craves. 

But what if it was just ONE.

What if it was just ONE human? One life?

One moment transformed like alchemy from fear to courage or even love.

Imagine the ripple as your fire of pure fortitude touched another in their darkest moments.

For that is how we shine on to another day.

Someone lights the candle that has been snuffed out by our pain.

A helping hand.

A considerate gesture.

A kind word.

A smile.

A bit of grace.

It may not look like a participation trophy or Facebook-worthy certificate to snap a picture in ego-serving virtue signaling of your own strength, suffering, or to show how much people care about you.

For that is only a fleeting moment of painful, glorious acknowledgment is ensnared in the genetically modified malnourished prose of your pain. 

The flame is that of real nutrition: the soul foods of love, compassion, joy, and peace.

One soul, igniting another, to pay it forward and light the way for someone else.

That is how we as a species keep going. We keep loving others more than we love our own pain, more than we love the illusion of what was lost.

We pay homage to what was by allowing the light to be passed on.

The hope to be illuminated through the grief. 

The possibility to shine brighter than the pain. 

The vision to burn with reverential remembrance for those who came before, and for the future of those whom we will also light the way for.

That is how we grow beyond the illusion of our ego, who wants to hide away in false praises of “strength.,”

We instead embrace the power within to see both, see all, love all, judge not, and neither need praise for being human having a human experience nor be revered for being divine and expanding into love. 

Remember your reign is now.

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