softness is strength

After pondering over it in the last few months of my life I’ve come to a conclusion about what it means to be strong.

Strength is not walking into a room with big energy, intimidating someone to get your way, dressing a certain way for influence, raising your voice at someone, and wielding power. Strength is also not just in putting up hardened walls around yourself to deal with the harshness of life and its people.

Strength is when you decide to put in the work to keep your heart soft towards fellow human beings when one or a few of them have broken your trust and your heart. It lies in deciding to believe again and try again differently after failing down multiple times in a row.

Strength lies in becoming an optimistic realist instead of giving in to cynicism, pessimism, and despair. It lies in your decision to smile brightly and laugh whole-heartedly again while being well-acquainted with the existence of pain and suffering. It lies in still trying to see beauty in the world after seeing horrible things play out on your screen.

It’s not always easy to remain soft. Life gives us humans so many opportunities where we could harden ourselves, become wary and distrusting of all people, become self-critical and give up on our ideals, and close ourselves off from the world and blame the world for being the way it is.

But I think that true strength lies in acknowledging these things, gaining insight into the reality of things, and putting in the effort to stay kind, believing, and nurturing of the softness of your heart. Strength lies in undoing the armour we put up to protect ourselves from time to time and keeping our soft side alive.

Because without softness, there isn’t much love, warmth, and contentment of the heart to be experienced.