To All of Us, Feeling the Weight of the World

Dear friend,

There are days when the air itself feels heavier, when the weight of what is happening around us presses into the quiet spaces of our lives. The world fractures, and somehow, you are expected to continue — working, tending, loving, showing up as if the ground beneath you is not shifting.

I recognize the way your shoulders curve under the invisible weight of headlines that crack like thunder across the sky of our lives, the way your breath catches when you remember the state of things. I see how you still rise each morning, pour your coffee/tea, and step into a world that feels more and more like a foreboding dream—one where justice wavers, where cruelty echoes louder than kindness, where truth is perpetually on trial, where the very air feels heavy with unspoken grief.

You were not meant to carry all of this.

And yet, you do.

You are not imagining it.

This moment in history is asking more of us than we ever thought we’d have to give. To stay present when the world feels unbearable. To hold onto hope when it seems naïve. To resist both numbness and despair in a season when either would be the easier choice.

Dearest friend, there is something holy in the way you continue to witness, how you refuse to look away. The world does not need more numbness right now; it needs more awakened hearts and yours is among them.

But staying awake does not mean staying paralyzed.

It does not mean drowning in the sorrow of what is broken all around us. It means letting the weight you feel become a bridge, not a cage.

Despair will tell you that your smallness renders you powerless. Hope will remind you that your smallness is exactly where power begins. Not in grand gestures or impossible feats, but in the way you choose to be human in an inhumane time.

In the way you keep showing up — for yourself, for your neighbor, for the stranger or family member who doesn’t think like you, for the tender moments that stitch the fabric of a life still worth living.

Start where your hands already are.

Tend to what is within reach. When the news feels like a storm, be the one who builds shelter. When voices around you speak in fear, be the one who answers with truth. When apathy calls your name, resist by loving the world more fiercely than it seems to deserve.

It is not naïve to believe in joy while the world burns. It is revolutionary. It is what ensures the fire does not consume us completely.

To drink in the beauty of a sunrise, to laugh in a way that reaches your ribs, to care for the people who cross your path as if they are sacred—this is not a betrayal of the world's pain.

It is what keeps you from being swallowed by it.

You, dear friend, are not here by accident. In this moment of time, in this season of society. And though it may feel as if history is collapsing around you, you are still in it.

You are still shaping it.

Every time you choose to bring light into a dark place, you remind the world that not all has been lost. Every time you refuse to become what you despise, you stand in quiet rebellion. Every time you take one more step forward when everything begs you to stop, you are a living testament to what endures.

So, let the weight on your shoulders become something else — let it become fuel. Let it become clarity. Let it become the fire inside you refusing to be extinguished.

Yes, you can still swear and take breaks from it all when your nervous system calls for it. Practice listening to what your body needs in the moment instead of always trying to correct your body.

Your body knows the way forward, friend. By listening to its wisdom, you can actually engage the sensations of your feelings as they arise. And by doing so, you alchemize your feelings into more fuel instead of repressing them. So take the walk, shake the body, dance ridiculously in the kitchen while making dinner, offer yourself healthy ways to let the emotions move through you so they don’t overwhelm you.

The world is shifting. You are part of the shift.

This world needs you. And you, my dear, need this world.

Stay with it. Stay awake. Stay with us.

With you in all of it,

Practice Postscript

• The Reflection:

  What is one small act of courage I can practice today that aligns with the world I want to live in?

• The Everyday Practice:

  Choose one practice of defiant joy — drink your coffee or tea slowly, plant something in the ground, send a kind message to an old friend, read something aloud— anything that reminds you that this life is still yours to love and shape.

• Living in the Questions:

  In the face of everything, how will I continue to bring light and safety into this world in a way that is uniquely mine?

• How can I best engage in this practice without abandoning myself or bypassing the realities of how I feel?