permission

In case you’re waiting for permission. You’re invited.

The trouble with harbouring or hiding your own genius is that no one else will beg you for it.

Very few are hunting down the gifts of others. 

We’re too preoccupied with our own struggles and dramas, 

our own seeking of victory or virtue.

Who among us is slowing down and peering into our neighbour’s window, noticing her wringing her hands anxiously and calling out to her, “I see you there, withholding something. I see you pressing your opinion into a ball in your gut. 

I see you choking back what’s true in you.”?

No one. 

At least not in any way you can count on to lure you out. 

Maybe it’s because we’re self-focused, twiddling on our own unmade art, 

swelling with our own unsung songs. 

Maybe it’s because we don’t want to be invasive. 

Maybe we don’t see how much we need each other to be brave, to be true. 

Maybe it’s just weird to call each other out, 

frightening to tell one another “you have more to give. 

I see it rotting in you. Bring it. Hand it over to us.”

You must choose to show us who you are.

You’ve got to muster the courage to tell us what you have to say. 

No one will give you permission. 

Please assume you’re invited. 

What’s grating at you, eating you, feeding your self-doubt with every moment it’s unspoken, dragging you toward darkness every time you look away, turning from its shimmer? 

Our dumbed down expression, homogenized voices, laying down and being rolled over by
the status quo is killing us.

If you’ve been waiting for permission, here’s your permission.

If you’ve been waiting for an invitation, you’re invited. 

Maybe not by some high authority picking you, 

maybe not with the blessing of your mother or approval of your father. 

Perhaps not by the prof that tore apart the paper you poured your heart into 

or the lover who tore your heart out.

No, this permission comes from someone like you. 

Someone who knows the agony of the rocks in the belly left unturned in the search for the Self. This permission comes from the tiny hopes for a better world that may have already slipped through our greedy fingers, 

the Earth herself tumbling away and ready to barf us off.

This is permission from your neighbour, wringing her hands, desperate for your fullest, 

truest self to come out, stir something, make something, say something and by your sheer audacious bravery, give her permission to do the same.

Chela Davison