How to Keep Going

I want a large poster framed at the foot of my bed, titled:

How To Keep Going. I want gorgeous typography and clever design to arrange wisdom in easy phrases I repeat like mantras and imagine tattooed on my arm.

How to keep going, it would tell me every morning. Don’t stop, it might say. Don’t give up.

Rest when you need to. When your optimism wanes, try sleep first, and if that doesn’t work try yelling your rage in the streets.

Forget imagining the future or planning for it and stomp your feet firmly in the ground of today.

Remember the children are watching and find the best inside of you for them.

Some days I would hate the words. They would feel weak and naive, like a band aid after a car crash.

No, honestly, I would say, as if it were a conversation in real time.

How to not lose heart. How to not spend ourselves to the bottom of the bottom. How to refill in a real way.

How to find the core of oneself that does not rise and fall but is solid, like iron.

How to burn every unnecessary part away and get down to all that ever mattered.

What is unchanging. What we must do and stand for as long as breath enters us. This heart beating. These lungs breathing. As long as they do.

As far as the sound of this life travels.

Let it be heard. Let it be felt.