I Don’t Have The Answers To Your Problems, But I Can Be Here With You As You Figure Them Out

I wish had a better way with words. I wish I could tell you the right things at the right time. I wish I knew exactly what to say before the moment is lost.

But I can’t, because my questions are the same as yours. I am seeking the same answers you’re looking for; I’m trying to see what unfolds when the scattered pieces of the jigsaw puzzle slowly fall into place. I’m also trying to visualize the colorful hues I need to splash onto that plain, single-colored canvas.

As you speak to me, I watch you wander off to a distant world – partly because you’re not listening to me, and partly because I keep repeating the same things over and over. Sometimes I wonder if my advice even helps. As I listen to your litany of questions, I am amazed by all the answers you already have but cannot comprehend. And I suddenly feel better about not knowing what to say, because somehow, you already know it, and you always save the day.

I don’t have the answers to your questions, because your questions aren’t for me. But whoever they are for, the answers may never be what we hope for them to be. I want to turn the page and write a new story for you, but I just gaze at you and wonder how I can help. How I can comfort you.

I’m not the one with the solutions. But I can try to take you to a better place.

Look at the blue sky, I say. Look at how beautiful it is. And suddenly the sky becomes so heavily overcast that you can’t see me anymore.

Look at the children running around in the playground, I say. Look at how carefree and happy they are. And suddenly one of them trips over a fence and goes stumbling, face down.

You are convinced that nothing I say can change the truth. You recognize that I’m urging you to haze your vision, but your attention does not escape the calamities (or mishaps) that follow my suggestions.

What I really want to say is that beauty is waiting for you to find it everywhere around you. It’s hidden in the friendly lick of a newborn puppy that can’t wait to be loved and love someone back. It emanates when you watch a mother standing in the bus just so that her child can have a seat. It reflects in the voices of people listening to music and strumming along, unperturbed by what people around them think. It pours through that river that you saw at your last trip on the mountains. It reaffirms its presence in the vacillating silence that scares you at one moment and exhilarates you in the next.

But if it is hard to look around and find that beauty, I’ll just tell you to look inside.

And if that’s impossible too, I’ll just hand you a mirror so that you know what beauty really is.