This AND
On silence granting permission
There is something beautiful about silence, the way it cascades around you like a shower of light.
And then proceeds to embrace you like a warm hug you secretly desire when you’re next to a crush.
I remember writing about silence for my college essay.
Sometimes, I still revel at my own writing
How the hell did I write this at 16?
Right now, it reads like words strung fervently together in hopes that it would land me a seat at a prestigious university.
I can still remember the pressure I felt as I slammed my fingers against a laptop in my Dad’s office as my Aunt looked over my shoulder.
The world couldn’t stop yelling and at the same time, I found so much solace in the freedom I had to write. Not many people would understand what I wrote so I was told to edit until it was perfected to fit in the box deemed ‘acceptable’.
These would be my final words in that essay:
Silence helps me view the world differently as if I was speechless and a mime. It helps me focus my energy on what is needed; it helps me develop myself through its serenity and calmness. Silence also allows me to apprehend my thoughts at the appropriate time. It allows me to retreat as well as compels me to become self-reliant through its terror.
Silence lets me express my feelings of happiness. It also takes me into the life of the movies of Charlie Chaplin, into a different world. Silence allows me to escape my world and transfer into a world based on sight, hearing, taste, and touch. The outlook provided by this simple world can change my behavior and my appreciation for sound.
Silence, where do I begin!
Sometimes silence reaches me when I am desperate for a solution like the final impulse of resistance is that sweet surrender of acceptance.
We tend to call that moment ‘giving up’ and frankly, I feel it’s more like ‘opening up’.
There is so much I can expound on when it comes to tension and release. I will save that wisdom for another day.
In one of those moments of opening up, of blooming into the present,
I received a prayer.
I had been ruminating about the lack that still existed in my life and on the presence of abundance that constantly existed around me.
I was focused on how the abundance wasn’t what I felt I needed.
I had been praying for stability and for financial abundance.
It has been the longest thread in my story over the last 5 years.
I had decided to leave the part of my life that I felt was dictated by society, by partners, by family, by all external parties.
I was going to bet on myself.
As it turned out, I had no idea what that meant.
I had no idea how much dust existed on the mirror of my soul,
how much sticky residue exists even after you leave Society’s web,
or even how enmeshed my own identity was in the identity of other.
I just believed that if I took the leap, the Universe would catch me.
As it had in every other leap I took, so off I went.
The Universe seemed to find the joy in letting me hit my backside.
I sat there withered, crying, alone.
I wanted someone to rescue me,
someone to give me the answers.
In time, I would realize that I had to be the one to do that.
I had to be the one who had to start coloring the darkness that was around me.
I thought the darkness was a curse, that I was the only one who had to wrestle with this. Everyone else around me who were kindred spirits on my path seemed to have frolicked on.
Why was it hard for me? And again, I would land back on the ground.
I had kept banging up against the invisible fence that binds around you when you decide you are the victim of life.
All comparison would do is shock me back to the ground.
And again, I would begin.
Now 5 years in, there is a different peace that exists.
And as I feel myself reaching my final steps in this journey, I can’t help to feel that pang of impatience. I can’t help but hear the nagging of my ego -
Where is it?
Where is my prize?
Did I do all this work for nothing?
What happened to the belief that the internal dictates the external?
So as I sat with that nagging, I could hear another voice reminding me to feel into what I’m grateful for. After about 15 minutes of playing tug of war, I began to see all the abundance around me.
Honestly, I don’t know how I survived on the little money I’ve had for these last 5 years. I’ve been able to fly around the world and even add new countries to my list.
I’ve met new friends and old, I’ve stayed in gorgeous places. I mean it is insane.
The kindness, the support, the love I’ve felt - I am blessed, truly.
As I sat in that love, I thought, what if this is it?
Can I be happy if this is it?
If this is my limit, the rezeki I have reached in this lifetime, am I okay?
As silence enveloped me like water around a rock,
I felt a deep knowing emerge.
This AND.
It’s not about this or,
It’s This and more
This and everything else I desire.
All of a sudden, as if by magic, my body relaxes.
Space enters, possibility becomes the only answer like it’s the only movie that can play in the screen of my mind.
I’ve entered into the night sky and every star is a reminder of the possibility that exists.
I can have it all, I whisper, as the tears begin to trickle down my face.
The tears turn to sobs and then into full body quivers as my bones begin to sob.
I can have more, I whisper, I can have it all.
There is no ending, only infinite.
Again, I break out into what I now call, a deep bone cry.
Every sob opens up room in my body.
As if every cell now is remembering the truth -
I can have it all. I can manifest all my desires.
Again, the sobs deepen except this time,
I can feel the hidden vats of guilt and shame wash through me.
Guilt has no place to live in my desire to want more.
Shame doesn’t need to exist in my wanting.
I begin to ask,
When did we decide it was greedy to want more?
When did we decide the glass was ever anything but full?
Suddenly, those questions take me into my body
And I begin to feel the air and space as much as the water in my body.
The illusions of what is empty now begins to appear full and abundant.
I sit there imagining the water in my body form beautiful snowflake like structures, definitely drawn from my studying of Masaru Emoto’s work.
I begin to call out to all my cells, “Hi! I love you. Thank you for all that you do.”
I believe that water and our cells respond to our words and intention.
That what we say, feel and believe leaves a mark on the molecular world around us
Because I have felt it.
In my own body.
In my own cells.
How many of us actually ground into that belief?
How many of us have all our senses turned on, fully receiving, fully alive?
How many of us treat our bodies like individual celestial Universes?What if that’s what we do as kids?
As children, we would run towards what we wanted, never apologizing for the way it looked or even pausing to think about whether it was safe or if we were even up for the job.
We never felt ashamed for the size of our wanting.
We never cared if what we desired was inconvenient.
We reached for everything — the knowledge, the adventure, the conversation — without guilt.
Why is it so hard to find our way back there?
I remember being eight or nine, sitting in a car with my siblings, my aunt and uncle. I don’t remember exactly what I was asking — whether it was about bodies, or the kissing scene in the Hollywood film, or the whispered Hindi and Gujarati words passing between the adults that I was desperately trying to decode.
What I remember is my eldest sister looking me straight in the eye and saying — “Don’t worry. I’ll tell you when you grow up.”
And BAM, a giant pang, I could feel my heart sink. I immediately started looking out the car window searching for a shooting star so I could wish to be older.
I don’t know if that was the day I decided I needed to be different.
To be more.
To be somewhere other than exactly where I was.
I just kept getting that answer.
And slowly with every answer, I stopped knowing how to enjoy being exactly what and where I already was.
The reason I say This And came as a prayer is because it felt like a serum to my cells,
A deliverance of knowing that was so long forgotten.
A call out to that inner child of mine.
The serum yelling into each cell —
You are enough now. You are enough here.
You have created all that you desired. And there is room for more.
Go back to seeking without permission. Go back to receiving without apology.
You are allowed to have it all. And you never needed to hear those words of permission.
My inner child yelled back,
some rules are made to be broken
And some are made to be resurrected.
Remember, dear Sarah, remember.
The rules I am resurrecting —
Play.
Life can be lived through joy, through creativity, through the pleasure of simply being alive and wanting and receiving.
There is stability in play. There is abundance in play. You can live off a life of play.
The world told me to be serious, to earn it, to justify the wanting.
I answer back confidently —
this AND.
I get to have what I have created.
And more. And more. And more.
That guilt
the one that whispers who are you to want this
I know where it comes from now.
A long line of women who silenced their needs for everyone around them.
Who passed down love and sacrifice in the same breath.
Who never got to say this AND.
I get to say it for them.
I get to say it for myself.
These letters ask you to come as you are.
So you can leave more yourself than when you arrived.
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Yes to every word of this 💛 your writing always meets me somewhere I didn’t realize I needed.
I'm feeling and seeing so much abundance in you as I'm reading this. You are everything AND more 💞