My Prayer

Today, I feel really grateful. Grateful for all the amazing people I know and for the ways in which they inspire and challenge me. I've always felt life is pointless without other people. Everything I am is that way because of the people I know and have known and will be shaped by the people I will meet. It's wondrous to me.

I don't pray much, and I'm not big on the idea of one deity, so I really don't pray to a god. The idea of this one being controlling it all doesn't make sense to me. But I do believe in this sort of huge conglomeration of something greater; that everyone and everything has something of that greatness in them. I have huge faith in everything that is. So sometimes I offer up a thought to the universe and hope that somehow it will be heard.

A few months ago I was lying in bed, worrying about the people I loved and this prayer came to me. Every night since, I've thought it every night right before I fall asleep. It's the purest expression of me I have ever thought, and so I've never shared it. I've never been one who's huge on prayers and appeals--well, I'm told I was when I was very young, that I used to offer up prayers like I was talking to a friend, but I stopped being that little girl along the way--but when this thought came to me I knew it was big. It was everything I ever wanted in life. It was me.

Look after those I loved whom I can't watch over anymore. Help me stay strong for the loved ones in my life. Keep the people I will love someday safe until I reach them.

I really do love everyone, even those I don't like, cliche as it sounds. Personally, I hate being told someone is praying for me, even though it's meant well; something about it feels wrong to me. I'm not praying for you. But I think about all of you, hope for all of you, and am grateful for all of you. You all inspire me to be better in every sense. I'm very humbled.

And so I say with all my heart, thank you for being you.