It’s a meaningless cliché to tell you to dance like no one’s watching because you know they are, so I’m just going to tell you to dance.

Dance, and keep dancing, but you have to understand that if it were as easy as standing up and moving your feet then you’d be doing it already, so you’ve got to realize that sometimes being alive means standing still.

They tell you to pick your battles but sometimes there’s nothing to fight but you, and you didn’t bring the weapons for that, so you’ve got to be still. Be still, because sticks and stones can break your own bones and razor blades can cut you but no stone’s ever gonna break the part of you that cares, the part that cares so much you started dropping f-bombs instead of compliments and grenades instead of roses to keep yourself from getting too close, the part that tried to keep everyone away by constructing a barbed wire fence of scars and broken promises, topped with broken glass bottles made of shattered hearts.

Be still, because you’re still there inside that battered wall and you’ll be there when it comes crumbling down like Berlin made out of breadcrumbs, and when you’re standing in the wreckage of the part of you that tried to tear you down you’ll be able to follow those breadcrumbs and they’ll lead you to something you’ve always had but never knew, and when you find it you’ll see that it’s not in you and it’s not in me but in the place where our hands meet and your bare feet touch the earth.

You’re worth more than the raw cost of the scrap made to build you, worth more than the cabbages and kings and the bits of broken universe that came together and came apart to make you something shattering but never shattered, a constant active verb in stillness and in motion. So dance. Dance for the agony and for the joy, for the best way to know God is to live, and to love many things.