I had a dream last night about a man who approached me at a table.  He started talking to me, I can’t quite recall how we got to this point in the conversation, but eventually he said to me “You know, Mads, it is so easy to love you, takes no effort.”  After I woke up, I realized that I needed so desperately to hear just those words. That probably many of us do but we never think to share them. It is easy to love you. And I discovered that this is probably the deepest lie in my heart: “it takes resilience, effort, strength to love you”.  How awful it feels to believe in that. And how untrue yet stuck it is.

Life stripped clean is lovely.  So deeply pure. I think about the golden moments of childhood: blowing out candles for a new year or teaching yourself how to do the monkey bars.  The moment a new one comes into the world. Or even when one is finally able to conceive. Miraculous moments of goodness stripped to its purest form.  Life bleached.

Life that becomes dusty and grungy grows hedges around other pieces.  It makes areas cloudy, confusing, constricting. Children are abandoned.  Cancer is common. Love is rare.

Life is cruel. It is brutal. It has no understanding and no compassion.  It will bring you further to your knees than you thought possible but it will also bring you closer to the clouds when you let it.  The thing I’ve learned about life is you are not its friend, just as it is not yours. It will not treat you with respect or kindness.  It does not hold a hidden treasure chest of all your dreams. It does not pick and choose who it destroys. Yet, life is a gift, and you alone hold responsibility for living it.