You Are the Best You There Is

(We wrote most of a manual to help you roll out your own EarthNight. Over this next year we will polish up sections from this manual and post them here as Notes From the Book –  A series of posts from the EarthNight Handbook.)

You Are the Best You There Is!

You are the best you there is. We need you as you are. You are the right you. You are the you we need. You will change, but you will not change you. You will still be you. And this you that you will keep discovering, keep uncovering, keep unfolding, keep revealing is exactly the you we need you to be. 

You can stop trying to make yourself. You did not make yourself. You cannot make yourself. But you can be yourself. The you that you will keep being is the you that we will keep trusting. For what choice do we have? Is there any you, that you are not, that you can now start to be? Or is there any you, that you are, that you will ever cease to be? Our living planet has you in it and needs you in it. What other you could we ever need like we need you, just you, right now and right now and right now. Trust us with you. Let the rest go. You can trust you. 

This does not mean you will make no mistakes. You will make lots of mistakes. Please make lots of mistakes. How else will you learn? How else will you discover? No one else has been where you are now. Who could teach you to be you? You must teach. You must learn. So make mistakes every day. Just try to make no fatal mistakes. Try not to make the same mistake more than three times in a row. And try not to make three almost fatal mistakes in a row, for the third in a row is often the fatal one. Clean up your messes, and do it quickly enough so we all can return to making fresh new mistakes. Make new mistakes every day – a new day a new mistake. We live together just so we can make mistakes together and clean them up together. We can clean up all of our mistakes that are not fatal. So let your mistakes be your teacher. Keep missing the mark, yet keep correcting. You will learn. You will change. You will become. You will live. 

Our world, our universe, has been entrusted to your care, to my care, to our care. There is nowhere to draw the line that separates what we will entrust you with and what we will not. Simply by being in the same world, we all have trusted you with all our lives. At every moment we place our lives in your hands. You have an indelible say in your destiny, in my destiny, in the destiny of all. Your destiny is to have a say. This trust can be daunting, terrifying. Yet it is unavoidable: a fact of life, not a matter of interpretation. Your life is in my hands when we are driving on the same road, when we are breathing of the same air, when we are spenders of some of the same coin. Every step, every breath, every word is an act of total trust. We cannot escape putting our trust in what we use to live. By choosing to live in the same world, we put our trust in each other. 

You are worth it. You are worthy of your own trust and mine. It is right that we should put our whole world in your hands, in your hands with our help. Where else and who else could we trust? Would we trust someone who is not here? And is there is anyone who is here, actually here, who has not demonstrated their will to live? Is there anyone who can be here and not live? And if we trust you to live, here on earth, is there some part of earth that we would withhold? 

You are exactly what we trust. You are the center. You are the center of life. All life revolves around the still center of your being. Because you have succeeded in being – being you – I have a chance to be me. You can trust you. You can put your trust in what remains when all of you seems lost. You remain.

You are radical. You are a new root, and by being you, you change things at the root. You inspire a revolution to change things at the root. Even to “remain the same” requires a continual and radical revolution at the core. We must all change, even to remain the same. And you inspire us to change to remain the same.

You change everything. You change the world. You are here to change the world. Everyone who comes here, comes here to change the world. And you have succeeded. You are good at it. You are still alive, so you are succeeding at changing the world to make room for what you need the world to be. There is more. Oh yes, there is more to come. We need ever more of this world you change, this world that allows you to be you.

We need you. We need you to be you. 

You are an infinite intimate invitation. That’s who and what you are.