“Enlightenment is when a wave realizes it is the ocean.”

— Thích Nhất Hạnh

Hello friends, we have come to the end. This past summer, I had to ask myself if I wanted to a) invest the mental energy, time and attention it would take to increase my readership, or b) focus on other things and just ride out the next few months. I chose b). So now I have come to the end, I’ve run out of content to post, and today is my final post, at least for now, but probably period. What will the last words in this blog be? What will be the absolute final thought for a project that’s spanned the past two years?

I suppose I would take you back to the beginning. In a lot of ways, this blog has been an exploration of living in a big, fat, addicted body, and getting to somewhere else. My latest project is learning to live in my body, even as it gains back a lot of the fatness I hoped I had eliminated for good (I had not). I reflected just recently on how I tried to kill my body, and my brain and everything I was along with it. And my big fat body saved me. I hated it, I fought it, I tried to kill it, and it brought me some of the greatest mercy I have ever experienced. 

Now, in my good moments, my heart is full of the ridiculous miracle that is being a living being with cells and organs and consciousness. Even the tiniest, most insignificant cells are intricate, exquisite, and critical contributors this being that is me, this living being, this person, this Stef. And I am myself tiny and insignificant, and intricate and exquisite and a critical contributor to what life is, on this planet, in 2023. Without an individual cell, my life and my being would hum along pretty okay. Without an individual Stef, this project of life would continue okay too. But at the same time, the cell and the Stef are part of what make this experience what it is, and I know my cells matter. I like to think Stef matters too. 

And in the middle of all of this, I am only one body! This planet is filled with billions of bodies, with quadrillions of cells, and we are all just metabolizing and thinking and interacting, and when you take a moment to let that in, it’s vertigo like the best drug moment you ever had – it’s a stoner “whoa” trip that you can’t dwell on for too long because it’s too big, and it makes your heart hurt. Every functioning organ, and every dizzyingly diverse little being, and 7+ billion people with their big human brains solving problems and loving each other and hating each other and ruining everything and making life so interesting…

Did I mention I intentionally tried to check out of this? This is the best party ever, and I’m so glad I’m still invited, even after I threw up on the rug and yelled at the hosts. I’m glad I got sober in time to see what an incredible party we’re having. I used to be drunk all the time, and now I’m this witness. I can be gleeful about my cells and spiral into amazement at our universe. I can grab you by the lapels and say, “Look at this! Are you seeing this? This is sh!t is bananas!” 

And sure, an individual cell doesn’t matter, and Stef doesn’t matter, but we don’t matter in the best possible sense – if I make a mistake at work, or hurt someone’s feelings, or lose my cat, it’s really all okay. None of it matters. The big picture is that we’re here, on this lonely planet, experiencing a life that is nothing less than miraculous. In the vast inky vacuum of space, we’re it. We’re the only life we know of. Life is unlikely. Life is a gift beyond measure. Just to be alive is ridiculous, but we can even manipulate our consciousness about what life is, we can try to understand it, we can have insight into it, we can tune into it, and humans may be the only beings that can do that. And you are here, and you are a human, and you can do it! And I can too. Good fortune piled on good fortune. Meditation is the way that I’ve found to dial into it, but there are other ways I’d like to explore – science, for one. In a world where it can be hard to see outside of ourselves and our problems and our mess-ups, maybe we can remember that it doesn’t matter, in the best possible way, because we even have a life to mess up in the first place, and on a macro level, it doesn’t matter that we missed the deadline, or shouldn’t have said that, or couldn’t get out of bed. 

And I’ll see your miracle of life and raise you a miracle of love. If there is other life out there, I don’t know if it feels something like mammalian (and avian) love, but I do know love is one of the best things we have going. Maybe there are other ways of connecting in the universe that we don’t know anything about, but we know we have this. To look at a sunset and love it. To love your mom, and know your mom loves you. To share love with a whole other species. To love a walk in the woods. To love your work, and your children, and people you’ve never even met. We don’t always do it right – in fact, we love the wrong things, and show love in the wrong ways, and fail to show love where we do in fact feel it, and it’s messy. But it’s so, so fascinating, and even if there’s life out there, there may not be love. We are so privileged to share this life, this swirling planet, this world of love. Let’s try to put more love into it. It’s totally free, and we have an inexhaustible supply. 

In the meantime, I’ll put more love into you. I deeply appreciate the many tireless hours Daniel Brewer put into the technical requirements of this blog, and he also made it beautiful, and responded thoughtfully to my posts. I am grateful to you for a year and a half of reading along with me. This blog has brought me closer to many of you, and I feel known to you in a way I never have before. You have been so encouraging and supportive that my eyes well with tears when I think about it. I hope you have even had some moments of seeing a few things through a different lens. I think one or two of you have even tried meditation – may it be as wildly helpful for you as it was for me. I truly appreciate you going on this journey with me. What will the final words be? They can only be Thank You.