My friend,
I want to tell you a story about something that happened to me yesterday..
Not because it makes me look wise or useful, but because it showed me again how quickly we forget what is possible for any of us. Even now. Even this late in the game.
A man I’ve known for years came to sit with me for a couple of hours. He’s bright, articulate, educated, the kind of man people assume is steady inside. But he wasn’t steady today. He was tangled up in old beliefs about what he’s allowed to want.
He told me he’s always felt a pull to teach mind and body coherence, to take it beyond the academic walls and actually help people. Part of him knows he was born for it. Another part is terrified of wanting more.
I listened to him wrestle with thoughts he didn’t choose. Thoughts that have been handed down from systems that rewarded performance and punished inner truth. Thoughts that told him it isn’t humble to rise, or spiritual to follow his own calling.
The poet C. S. Lewis once wrote that “thoughts are but coins.” Today I watched that line come alive sitting on the patio, soaking up the winter sun. His mind kept minting old tokens, and every token said the same thing. Not you. Not now. Not your place.
But underneath all that noise was something else. A quietness I recognize. A deeper pull that doesn’t shout. A silence that speaks in its own language. Lewis called it fair Silence and prayed that it would fall and set him free. That is exactly what I saw beginning to happen.
We sat with the truth that wanting a different life is not pride. It is permission. We sat with the idea that his longing wasn’t rebellion. It was a remembrance. The truth of who he REALLY IS has been whispering to him for years. He finally heard it today. I watched his whole body soften when he realized nothing was wrong with him after all. He was simply overdue to tell himself the truth.
There was a moment when he straightened his spine and said, almost to himself, that maybe this dream wasn’t foolish. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe the old stories that told him to stay small were not the voice of God at all. Maybe they were just coins. Thin worn images of something sacred that had nothing to do with the life he is meant to live now.
I want you to hear this. His breakthrough is not his alone. It belongs to you too. If he can unhook from a lifetime of conditioning in one honest conversation, then what might be waiting for you the moment you turn toward your own deeper knowing.
I left that conversation thinking of the last line of the Lewis poem. Take from me all my trumpery lest I die. All the old clutter. All the false masks. All the fears that pretend to protect but only suffocate. That is what fell off of him today. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But enough to see the light come back into his eyes.
And because I promised you honesty, here is mine. I believe moments like that are possible for any of us at any age. I believe we are allowed to change. I believe we can reach for what our souls have been trying to hand us for decades.
And I believe in you.
With clarity. With affection.
Chapter three of Clara’s story arrives Friday.
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