Finding Partnership
How to be a writer:
Write.
How to be a dancer:
Dance.
How to be a guitar player:
Play guitar.
How to be a lover / partner:
Love. Partner.
How to love?
Open your heart.
Ease that tender & powerful muscle of yours ever-wider, till it feels it might explode.
Every day. Practice.
Practice looking strangers in the eye and remembering their humanity.
Imagine the journey they’re on. Even if they don’t know it’s happening - drop into empathy for them at the subway station.
Practice accepting the parts of you that you find hardest to accept.
And then practice not just accepting them, but appreciating them. Honoring them. Celebrating them.
Practice loving the past versions of you who f*cked up and made mistakes.
Practice forgiving your housemates, your colleague, your friend, for being imperfect, for not having learned or healed the things yet that would have made them easier to love.
Practice taking in the world around you - the sky, the trees - with the eyes of a lover.
Practice being a devoted lover to the sacred - to the earth, to your version of God, to life itself - writing poems to it and remembering to lavish it in compliments every day.
How to partner?
To “partner” is a verb, remember. It’s an act, repeated.
Show up, committed to collaboration.
Every day. Practice.
Build a radar for what needs doing, and if it’s not clear, ask.
Ask yourself how you can contribute.
Ask yourself how you can help your housemates, your colleagues, your friends thrive.
And yourself how you can help every shared project - from cooking a meal to creating a new community to running a campaign - feel more easeful, fun and connective.
Let go of your pride. Let go of needing to be right. Let go of needing everything done your way.
Learn to receive support, learn to ask for the help you need from the humans around you.
Take the weight off of others’ shoulders, but don’t take too much such that you become resentful. Don’t overcommit, and end up dropping it all.
Do choose a focus, choose who you’re partnering with, and do a damn good job making your collaborations exquisite.
Practice this. Practice this.
.
.
.
Once you’re a writer, people will read your words.
Once you’re a dancer, people will watch you dance.
Once you’re a guitar player, people will be excited to jam with you.
Once you’re a lover, people will be linin’ up to hold your sweet body.
Once you’re a partner, people will relish your support and meet you as a loving team.
.
.
.
Treat yourself as sacred, and a god will appear, to drink gratefully from the waters you have to offer.
