The teller at the bank asked how my weekend was. She didn’t ask it the way people do when it’s just part of the job. She seemed to want to know, and maybe she wants that from everyone who comes through the door, but this morning it was me. I told her it was a weird one. “Too much drama,” she said, remarking on her own weekend. “Exactly,” I said. “Wtf.” Then I reached for something brighter: another day, my health, the love of good people. We agreed to adopt that view, I traded cash for a receipt, and I went on my way.
It was a weird one. I spent it tangled in anxiety over uncertain situations with deep roots and long histories, and I struggled, truly, to be of any use or good company to the people around me. So I mostly kept my distance and worked at finding my footing. That meant reading philosophy and psychology, meditating, and gathering gifts for people having a much harder time than I am. It’s what I have. I know now that the old ways were never going to hold, and I’m grateful to see the difference, and more grateful still to have kept the will to correct course and say so out loud.
Sometimes the best course is to refuse the default and ask what you can do, not only for yourself but for someone in a worse spot. Most of us have been given more grace than we’ve handed out. The surplus should be spent freely, without waiting to be asked, in how we move through the world and decide what matters by the end of the day. I’m coming to believe grace is the mother of hope, and hope now sits at the center of all of my work.
Hard times have sharpened my sense of my place in art and in tattooing. I think it carries a responsibility to pass on what I’ve distilled from my own discoveries, a kind of wand we’ve all been handed, and how we wield it decides the quality of our lives. For me it’s always a return to hope, to love, to intention, to grace. Accepting everything else is part of survival too, realistically. But I’m reporting on perseverance as honestly as I can, in honor of the people carrying heavier loads.
Let’s remember the examples we’ve been shown, and pass on what their authors gave us freely. Now is the time. However difficult things look, perspective is the one thing you control, and it governs how you feel. Return to center. Always, return.
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