Promise

Dear Friends,
after sixteen years of struggles witnessed and struggles unknown to you I have officially filled for my permanent residency in the US.

Thank you for your inspiration, support and understanding. I am honored and humbled to have known you and be able to share my life and yours. A enormous "thank you" is also send to all New Yorkers that I have not had the pleasure or capacity to get to know. I have, however, shared the streets, subways, restaurants and parks with you. I have been inspired by your fashions, conversations I overheard and dynamic energies.

Looking back in time, the adventures, experiences, friendships formed and lessons learned, I am overwhelmed with a feeling of love so expansive and life affirming, the likes of which I have never felt before.

I am hopeful and eager to face this new way of being and discover ways to create a life full of wonder, love and compassion, as you have shown me is possible.
One of the most resonant lessons I learned was that struggle, unlike my earlier understandings, is not a "natural" way of being. It is not predestined, necessary or even a measure of valid effort. It can be a chosen path. Whether conscious or subconscious our desire for and attraction to the 'pull and push' of life is a learned reaction and a means to challenge and outdo ourselves.

I read somewhere that "a blade of grass does not struggle to grow, it just does". After my often tumultuous experience here I can fearlessly say I am deeply connected to that blade of grass.
In the years to come let us all create the largest, lushest, most expansive green grass field for kids to play on, and animals and people to lie on and bask in the sun..

With gratitude to all that I know, all I do not know, all I used to know, all I never knew, all I get to know and all I'll never know,

d.