Eternal Summer

Fuzzy feelings, the journey, and conversations with the Universe

Hello fellow beautiful humans,

I had dinner at the Yellow Deli last night (one of my favorite places, you should 100% read their history/manifesto, I found it very interesting and will most likely touch on it in greater depth in the future) with my friend Kaitlyn, who asked me a fantastic question: What are some of your favorite experiences? Warm and fuzzy feelings ensued, and if you ever need a conversation starter, I highly recommend.

Yesterday, Shut up and Dance came on at the county fair and I was reminded of the time I was 18 and in love at the fair, dancing as it was reaching closing time and the lights were beautiful and I just felt pure and happy and full of love for my people and for just being alive. There was that feeling of being free and young and in love for the first time, and I felt eternal. 

That’s what I love so much about the summer — it has a way of feeling eternal. And I guess that’s because it’s so much easier to sink into presence knowing that everything’s temporary — so you may as well sink into the moment, every moment, and let it last forever. 

It’s so hard to actively plan a life and sink into the moment at the same time. On some level planning the future is an act of constantly correcting course — some part of my life is lacking, I can visualize a better reality, my day to day isn’t what I want it to be yet, I want to have these experiences to feel more whole, to gain more wisdom, to get out of the stagnation I feel where I am — and it’s our way of manifesting our highest reality into our lives and acting on our truth as we change or discover more about ourselves. It’s so easy to get lost in what the present lacks and what is missing now compared to a vision of the future, and it’s even easier to get dragged down to hopelessness when you feel like you can’t map out concretely what will come between points A and B. 

As I write this I’m like holy fuck, that’s what they really mean when they say it’s about the journey, not the destination. Every passing day the truisms of the world only become truer — proof of the fact that growth really only happens on the experiential level, that no amount of forewarning can replace the experience of feeling something deeply. But that’s a side note. 

These days I often feel like I’m waiting for my life to start, and it has me reflecting on what it means to appreciate the waiting periods, something that sounds great in theory but difficult to comprehend in practice. But I suppose it would have to mean appreciating our suffering for pushing us closer and closer to our authentic selves, for the ugly duckling stages, the missed targets, the foggy path we continue to tread onwards; falling in love with our darkness; being grateful to ourselves for pushing through the fear and the unknown. As an artist I suppose it means loving your craft even when there’s no one else to really love it for you, when it’s yet to be witnessed by the world the way you want it to or before you even know how you want to be witnessed. 

And in the end I’ve arrived, once again, on the importance of loving yourself deeply — finding intimacy with the self to create an open channel of love with the Universe and the fellow beings by our side and those we find along the way. 

Some number of mornings ago I was feeling triggered, hurt, and sad and I was hit with the thought God no, not this again. This relentless visitor comes less often these days compared to others but inevitably pays a visit at some point. In my journal that morning I complained to the Universe about this — why does it come back? Is this something I really must live with? And I was reminded that suffering is, in fact, the nature of being human; it is the legacy of the human experience passed down from soul to soul. 

My next question was why does trying to understand what is causing me pain matter? Why does trying to understand any of this reasoning behind my suffering have any impact, or lesson our pain when we experience it? 

Around there I was told that there were no more answers or questions. The simple truth is that pain is quite inevitable, whether or not you understand it. And the solace I was left with was the unity of being alive,  just how beautiful it somehow is that across generations, time periods, cultures, and since the very beginning of our existence as a species, we have persevered and are brought together by this collective perseverance through the simple fact that we exist. 

I don’t know why thinking about this really matters. But it helped me to realize how expansive my love for humanity and my own humanness can really be. 

So I’ll leave you with that for now. This is a love letter to you — I love you for existing. 

Some tender moments with the fam: 

<3

Lucy Li