What patch of yourself do you most want to share? But don't.

To compose ourselves… is this not the act of an artist? 

To pull all the history, all those memories, the skills and talents and natural gifts, the dreams and hopes and fears, the expectations and obligations, the responsibilities, the desire and instinct, to navigate all of this energy and connect the dots and make sense of it so we can wake up and compose ourselves and walk out the door to engage with the world and other fellow composers, to be able to compose ourselves is nothing short of a goddamn miracle!

Everyday I am human, man, husband and partner, dad, dog owner, friend, writer, poet, essayist, worker bee and BLANK. 

I am success and failure. I am hungry. I am falling behind while believing in myself. I'm searching and hoping to be found. I am a mess, and then focused, and then exhausted.

I listen. I look up. I breathe. I read. And I work really hard to maintain peace of mind, to remain calm and alert, to contain the high reactive living within this body. 

And you, you do the same. 

We compose ourselves in proximity to each other in the natural world, and our compositions merge and alter each other, each version of each other.

Together, consider for a moment the results of this act of composing. All those different versions of ourselves interacting with versions of other humans: it's a wonder we get anything done. How do we manage to communicate and commute and survive without smashing into each other?

But also, I’m curious: what happens when we share more of ourselves? When we share the less composed elements of ourselves? What would need to happen for us to feel safe sharing the less curated patches of ourselves?

Patience for one. We would have to be more patient and wait for the story to unfold. 

What else? What patch of yourself do you most want to share, but hesitate for some reason? Why do you hesitate? How do you overcome that hesitation?