achieving beautiful things

a soft urgency

a soft urgency:
listening to the butterflies in your stomach, letting yourself fly and transform with the drive and curiosity of a child, and the kindness and unconditional love of a mother.  -G


the corners of my mind, 
are thoughts in the form of lilies and thorns and sunflowers.
they all dance, 
they rest, 
they kick and scream, 
they demand attention. 

in my mind, 
there's growth and there's grief.
different sides of me,
all together.
sometimes holding hands while ice-skating,
other times competing for who can do the best pirouettes. 

lately I'm learning to love them all.
the impatient driven me and the peaceful, 
letting things flow me.

I've been treating myself with kindness,
remembering that things take time; 
that rushing is just a coping mechanism, 
to escape from life as it is right now.

sometimes the only thing that isn't messy is an idealized future. 

the future me looks cool and I can't wait to meet her. 
but still, 
I don't need to rush. 
this urgency doesn't have to pull me away  
from enjoying who I am right now.

but I feel it,
I feel a sense of urgency.
like the niagara falls in the winter dying to jump into the river.

it's urgent. 

like taking the pancake I was burning out of the stove yesterday;
yes, I'm not very good at making pancakes. 

hand in hand with urgency, 
there's this deep desire in me, 
to be gentle.
let myself feel things on a slow morning walk, 
on a romantic night by myself listening to my night funk playlist,
or on the pages of my journal. 

I tell myself, ten minutes of journaling is never time wasted. 

just being gentle, 
I don't want to make the mistake 
of being too harsh on myself again. 
I don't need to be the bad strict parent 
to achieve anything in life. 

I can tell myself that everything is gonna be okay, 
that yes, life is overwhelming sometimes, 
but it's also overwhelmingly beautiful. 

I can tell myself that I'm doing so good, 
one step at a time, 
we're healing the past while we're moving forward, 
and we're doing it at the perfect pace.

there's no rush.
but we're moving, 
with softness and urgency.

I go to the grocery shop and although I feel tired today, 
I have this drive to make things happen.
while I was grabbing some peppers and olive oil, 
I suddenly had this epiphany 
-every epiphany I have either happens at the beach or somewhere where there's food;
I thought, 

I'd rather be a fool
than be bitter. 
I'd rather be delusional, 
than be regretful. 

I want to be a fool and think that I'll achieve everything 
I've ever dreamed of when I was thirteen.

I'll take that any day over having my feet on the ground,
in this depressing city with people who are saving up 
for a retirement,
that would probably look more like 
sitting at home wishing you went back to work, 
than going on a cruise in Hawaii. 

I want to be a fool who tried and who lived and who had fun. 

I want to be a fool, in love with life and its possibilities, 
not beat up by expectations and what others think of me. 

I'd rather be delusional, 
than be regretful. 

to make things happen you have to imagine them first. 

so that's what I'm doing now. 
close my eyes, 
I can see myself, 
up on stage, 
I'm confident, 
I'm letting myself feel, 
I'm me, 
I'm free. 

be delulu before you regret not having indulged in those silly dreams.

let yourself free.
before and after and always.
because it's very sad to hear someone in their late fifties regret so much of their life. 
I can almost feel how much that would hurt if I was in their place.
it's in my upper stomach, 
that sense of urgency again, 
it's telling me, 
tell him you love him, 
it's telling me, 

fail in front of everyone a thousand times,
cry in front of an audience, 
eat pizza alone in your apartment at least once, 
go to greece and stay in the sea until your skin 
becomes so wrinkly it scares you.
tell your dad he's being a bitch and own it.
reveal all your secrets in a song because 
someone in the world will relate so hard 
and your friends probably don't care that much anyway.
bake cookies a little bit more often because the simple idea 
of baking cookies is so cute.
go surfing even if it sounds dangerous.
be the first to believe in your talent 
and tell everyone they should believe in it too. 
dance really weirdly even if you think someone's gonna walk in.
say yes to the things you deep down want to say yes to, 
and no to being a people pleaser. 

let yourself free, 
let yourself be delusional. 

let yourself be the person who in their fifties, sixties, seventies
says
I did whatever the fuck I wanted and I did it well. 

I told everyone I loved that I loved them,
I chased everything that my heart desired, 
I laughed a lot no matter how loud or how late it was, 
I let my body rest and feel the highest it could possibly be, 
I believed in myself before anyone did and more than anyone did. 

I let myself dream, 
even though I had all these fears screaming at me, 
demanding attention. 
sometimes I like to call them thorns but I'm thinking of 
changing the word. 

these fears are so abundant,
they have their own names, 
rejection, 
abandonment, 
disappointment, 
fear of not being able to handle success.

deep down, I know they are there to keep me safe. 
maybe that's the gentleness I need to treat them with. 
tell them, 
I know you're here to help, 
but I've got this. 

back to the grocery shop where I had this epiphany. 

I imagined myself achieving my deepest, wildest dreams. 
I was indulging in the highs of my imagination, 
driven by this energy, this sense of urgency.
I was convinced that my dreams 
won't remain dreams forever. 

they'll turn into the other wild experience;
real life, 
they'll touch the grass, 
they'll smell seaweed and they'll taste a gyros. 

they will be here with me, 
and I will be the one to birth them.

all this dreaming, 
I hadn't done this in so long,
to imagine the best-case scenario, 
to really take myself on that ride in my mind. 

of all the fears, maybe the one that shows up the most for me 
is fear of disappointment. 

the thing that I'm trying to tell myself lately, 
is that disappointment is everywhere, 
and it will happen whether you're dreaming, 
or calling yourself a fool for having such unrealistic ambitions.

that somehow is a relief because it means that 
we are not making things worse by dreaming, 
we are not putting ourselves closer to disappointment by dreaming. 

we are bringing ourselves closer to that warm, 
cozy kind of happiness, 
the chicken soup, blanket and hot chocolate kind of happiness. 

that's what dreaming does to us. 

dreaming is the urgency in our hearts, 
in our belly, 
in our whole body, 
that this is what we're meant to do in this life. 

we should listen. 

we come and go in a rush because we're rushing. 
we need to slow down and let ourselves reflect 
on bus rides, on our break from work, lying on the floor. 
what do we want?
what is it we're running away from?
what are the butterflies saying?

we should listen. 
and we should act on it. 
with urgency and softness. 

I came up with this idea, 

a soft urgency. 
to represent the impatience, the drive, 
the ambition and the obsession   
behind those butterflies. 

a soft urgency, 
to represent the softness, the kindness, 
and the unconditional understanding 
that we need to approach our dreams with. 

I learned this not that long ago, 
maybe a year or a little more. 
in between my impatient nature and the harshness of my words, 
there was potential for compassion. 
in between the hustle culture narratives and my desire to 
prove myself to others,
there was potential for love.

when I was able to fully commit to the softness,
things started going so well for me. 

urgency, if spiced with a little bit of love, 
can be turned into something useful, 
fill me with motivation and drive
to be the best artist I could ever be, 
the best person I could ever be. 

urgency, sparkled with nurturing,
can take me to the wild beautiful places I knew existed. 
a state of flow, 
with art and with life. 

in softness, there is no burnout. 
there is no harshness, no mean parent or teacher or boss. 
in softness, there is flow, and a deep sense of belonging. 

a soft urgency.
our dreams are urgent but the way to achieve them is 
by being kind and patient with ourselves. 
by letting rest be part of it, not just a thing that you win at the end.
not the gold star when you have done all your work.

our dreams are urgent but healing and resting are urgent too. 

we need to listen to our thoughts, we need to turn up the volume 
and listen to them like we listen to our favourite song. 
then learn which ones are useful, 
and which ones are making us small. 
they are all trying their best, just like us. 
we just need to be gentle with them, 
make them a friend, 
listen to their rambling and now and then say 
you're letting things get to your head,
let's go get a drink and talk about movies and bad boyfriends. 

our dreams are also soft like cotton candy, so genuine and childlike. 
sometimes we need urgency to make them happen, 
so they don't stay dreams forever.

we need to allow them to fly out of the nest, 
with a little bit of discipline, 
maybe devotion is a better word. 
it is not rigid, or painful, or restrictive, 
it is playful and full of commitment. 

it is urgent. 

what will softness give you?
peace of mind, 
growth, 
resilience, 
self-love, 
reflection, 
art. 

what will urgency give you?
drive, 
ambition, 
motivation, 
flow, 
impatience, 
determination. 

both mixed with butter, salt, and chocolate, 
oven at 180 degrees, 
and bum,
there you have it, 
happy, fulfilled, and delusional chocolate cookies.                                  


and let me tell you, 
they are yummy. 

these are the delusional chocolate cookies

🌻I never had the paid option on, but two subscribers asked for it so I thought about how to give a bit more of my heart to the people who resonate with my words 💛 so in 2024 if you are a paid subscriber of this newsletter, you’ll get:

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or

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I don’t want to restrict any of my content to anyone. Right now, I want to connect and I want to put all my silly thoughts out there.

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