We each are engaged in a multitude of acts of service to our brothers and sisters. Every time we stop at a red light, offer money to a cashier, say hello, wash the dishes, put out the trash cans, we serve our family, our community, and the earth. In each of our daily roles - as builder or merchant, gardener or artist, teacher, healer, secretary, or salesmen - we can awaken compassion, we can find the spirit of Sangha and freedom.

But maybe you don’t need to be explainable. Maybe the most interesting perspectives come from being willing to occupy a difficult-to-define place, even if it means sacrificing others' understanding of you. The challenge then becomes committing to occupy that place far longer than most feel comfortable — long enough to cultivate a voice out of your curiosity that is confident enough in its own continuity to tell you exactly what’s worth committing to when the time comes.

I've never really met anyone else who oscillates so frequently and fervently between an intense desire for anonymity, to disappear even, and to crack oneself open entirely for the whole world to see. To be the maximum version of oneself in public, consequences be damned.

I am full of love for every one. And everything is soft and vague and very sad. It is sad, it is sad. But everything has meaning (…)

∆ Virginia Woolf, from The Complete Works