A NEW FAVORITE, BY A QUEEN —
i don’t have a 24 hanging in my closet, and it’s not my habit to say kobe everytime i throw a scrunched up piece of paper into a garbage can. in fact, i barely know much about kobe other than he was a regular feature on the electronic square box in our basement growing up. and that he was, and is, an icon.
yesterday’s news hit hard regardless.
i don’t have any meaningful words to share, but i did find someone who does. here’s a poem by keri schreiter:
to feel affected by a death of someone you don’t know, is to realize that our reach, our impact, our energy extends beyond the circle we perceive to be our own.
a reminder to be careful with words, to love and accept.
share, inspire and live an authentic life.
after all, life is fleeting and you are powerful.
schreiter says something i’ve been struggling to articulate: the idea that when someone who is bigger than life dies, and we feel it, like really feel it, it’s unsettling. because all of a sudden, we’re human.
and all of a sudden someone who only existed in an electronic square box in your living room has a physical weight. all of a sudden, they reached out of the tv, walked right up to you, and broke your heart. it didn’t matter that you hadn’t been tuning in all the years.
all of a sudden, we realize that “the circle we perceive to be our own” has room for much more than our family, friends, and coworkers. it has room for heroes we didn’t even know we cared about. it has room for the things we thought were just white noise in our day to day lives.
the circle has a ton of openings, which is both good news and bad, because it means we can love more than we think, and hurt more than we think, too.
keri’s poem made the sadness a bit less confusing. the best poetry does, i think.
i hope you all are holding your loved ones a little closer.
best,
n
p.s. back to regular format next week.