Katie Thompson

How does one create a softer way of being? 

Every day for the last 19 years I have woken up encumbered with a pressure so heavy at moments it forces me down in bed unable to even raise my head. Does one become softer by the sheer power of such a crushing weight of needles, surgeries, screws, rods, batteries and wires? You have no other choice when so much of you is forced to be steeled. You have to preserve and protect what softness you can.

At one point to sit in bed alone would not have been enough and most days it still isn’t. I have been forced to find ways to create something with nothing that could take me right out of the window and into my dreams. Not only did it distract me from the pain, it helped alleviate so much of what stifled me too.

Now I can run my hands along the indentions and scars left behind from that crushing weight. Internally I’ve rallied enough to know at times there is real strength in rest and preservation instead. In those one can explore deep actualizations that always felt just out of my reach thanks to the whirlwind of what I thought was conscious living.

It turns out that forcing myself to constantly be awake, aware, informed, participating, creating was not in fact conscious living. When these tools and methods become more like means of distraction or unhealthy forms of self-validation one is not as quite tuned in to one’s inner voice as one may have thought.

We have built a facade for ourselves on this planet that is moving more quickly by the minute, and creating real consequences for all of us in many ways. But the comfortability of going with the momentum that society decides we all should have isn’t as a safe as it feels. 

I say this as someone who has been corralled into a viewpoint of this life that has not only seen my own threads unravel but it has given me the ability to see how easily we can all let life unravel for us instead of with us. 

As blunt as the weight of life was for me to receive it, knowing that fragility of life so deeply at a young age was a gift I could not ever put a value on. For the longest time I didn’t know how to translate it, I could only feel and see things in ways not everyone else was able to. The ache to share it has never dulled, and I firmly believe it has carried me to this point in my life now.

Now more than ever I feel the need to slow down, and not in just a physical sense, but in an emotional one too. I find great enjoyment in my solitude, in the slow moments of creating my work. I feel more fulfilled with just a pencil and a piece of paper now than I felt with a studio full of supplies for years. Everything feels more meaningful. Quiet moments reflecting with my family provide me more joy than anything else in the world.

I think that regardless of what our many different paths and directions are, slowing down and softening our journeys can only benefit us all. Not only directly as individuals, but creating a culture, a momentum of compassion instead of crushing ourselves and one another could do us all a great good. 

Take a moment to truly enjoy your morning coffee. Turn off the television or just listen to your surrounding for a few minutes. Ask your child what their favorite part of their day was. Then savor every short second that we get here. A moment spent in love of life is rarely regretted.