I once heard the definition of life boiled down to a single, simple word: “growth.”
We are profoundly incentivized to grow, setting out on the great treasure hunt for the meaning dispersed across time and space. But it is an art.
A pilgrimage across the expanse of the mind is arduous, risky, and demanding of a set of wits, the capacity to crack jokes with demons and make love to tree spirits — skills that go a bit beyond the typical academic curriculum.
If you choose to set out the door, to fulfill that mandate in your soul for something beyond the world you’ve known, I can promise you’ll be challenged. It’s what you’ve signed up for.
And as those challenges strip away each idea you’ve held of who you are and what is true, I’ll offer a rule that I’ve kept through the myriad transformations, twists, turns, and defamations.
That rule is this: Love Everything.