I'm done with walls. I'd rather feel.

I struggle with this reality often. I used to be pretty good at not feeling, at closing myself off to the ugliness and pain that saturates our planet. I walled myself up well enough to keep from feeling much at all. But that was a long time ago. Now, sometimes, it's like I feel everything, and I would give anything in those moments to feel nothing at all.

Sometimes, it's all too much. 

Too heavy. 

Too violent. 

Too malicious. 

Too disgusting.

Too exhausting.

Human beings have mastered being inhumane. And for what? For nothing. Nothing important, anyway. Nothing righteous and real. Nothing that has anything to do with love.

Sometimes, I want my walls back. All of them and more. Whatever it takes to keep out every bit of darkness and all the wretched noise.

Of course, the walls keep out the magic, too. They block out the light as definitively as they block out the darkness. They silence the laughter along with the cries.

So I choose to stay open, and I choose to feel. I understand the truth of humanity—that we are as ugly as we are beautiful, as violent as we are peaceful, as wise as we are ignorant.

I understand the lies of humanity, too—that some are greater than others, that salvation is for a select few, that love comes with conditions. That any of us has any clue what's really going on here.

But here we are, human beings on planet earth, doing our best to make sense of this place, and of ourselves. And though our best is a far cry from anything good sometimes, it's where we are, and it's what we have to give.

So I'll keep giving some version of my best, in an effort to bring more peace and love to our world, and to create more equity among us, and to walk the path of empathy and compassion, and to make a habit of being kind. These actions—commitments—not only serve the greater good of everyone and everything, they help me make it through the darker moments, when I'm overwhelmed by the ugliness of us human beings, and by the misery I sometimes feel in myself.

I'm done with walls. I'd rather feel. As much darkness as there is in our world, and as vile as human beings can be, there's no denying the magnitude of our light. Pure radiance. Being able to see and feel the beauty of humanity makes feeling everything else tolerable, even okay. It gets me to the other side of the struggle every single time.

I will forever be in awe of who we can be when we allow ourselves to be love, when we sink into the beautiful humaneness of our humanity. That feeling will never be exhausting.