Wake up those lesser seen selves.

What does it mean to sleep through a life? Would we know if we were asleep? Or should we take movement alone as proof that we were alive and awake? How are we meant to know we aren't sleeping? We have to believe our movements, each movement, matters.

But first I think we have to know that we matter, that all of us matter, and that all of each of us matter. 

I know that my role as a father matters. I receive direct and immediate feedback that my actions come with a gravity in the lives of my daughters. When I make waffles for them or say no or tend to aches and pains, yes, I know I matter. But also, when I make them laugh, when I ask them about their day, when I sit beside them just because, with nothing to say, I can see and feel and believe that I matter, and that they matter to me.

I know that I can't sleep through those moments because I see the impact these moments and movements have on them. They can't help but express the emotion felt, reflect back the energy in the purest way. They are only just beginning to grow aware and self-conscious of those reactions.

I wish I could have done a better job at helping them fight the urge to throttle or hide the purity of these sensations. But maybe that's just a part of growing up: we all have to find a way to express the sensations we experience in our own way, we all have to embrace that expression, or risk sleeping through a life.

I know that my role as a worker bee matters. I see the lights flicker on, and the roof over our heads, and the fridge full. But how do I know other parts of me are not asleep?

And maybe this is why this awareness is so difficult to maintain: we are not always fully awake or sleeping. The many selves within us are in different stages of sleep and awareness at any given point throughout the days and weeks.

Some days, the human in me thrives, the creative spirit in me sings, the romantic rejoices, the neurotic and anxious and depressive wallower is at peace. But the feedback for these versions of myself isn't so immediate, isn't always felt, is harder to come by. Is that because pieces of us are more prone to sleep? Do our many selves weave in and out of periods of consciousness and openness and hopelessness? Are there ways we can align the many selves within to be awake all at once? And if so, can we then align our consciousness with the consciousness of others?

Maybe it all comes down to feedback: how well and how often we are able to receive and reflect the light and energy we encounter back into the world and onto our loved ones?

When asleep, the light we receive from others tells us we matter. Another’s desire to see the prism of selves we are is what awakens us. We are inspired to wake up no matter how we wake up, no matter who we wake up as. We know we are wanted and that our whole self matters.

But also, to be shown that some of the lesser seen parts of us matter, that they are not only worthy of a waking life but missed, desired, important to others.

To be offered a chance to step into the light so we might offer a portrait of the whole self to the world, to know that that whole self matters to both the whole self and our whole world, now that sounds like a life worth waking.