“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling.” (Aldous Huxley)

Someone posted this quote the other day and I keep re-reading it; particularly the lines, “Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.” This struck a major chord with me.

As a Major Feeler and Super Empath and Highly Sensitive Person (I made up most of those titles), it truly never occurred to me that I could feel in any other way but intensely and deeply. It’s just my wiring, and I have accepted and embraced that over the years.

But this. Wow. Maybe even though I feel everything deeply, I can just dip my toe in the deep feeling rather than going underwater and drowning. Maybe I can feel the fear or despair or sadness or disappointment but not step into it, not let it drag me down like quicksand.

And maybe for someone who isn’t wired the way I am, you’re thinking, “Um. Obviously. Just…don’t let feelings take hold of you that way. Why would you?”

The answer, of course, as I’ve written and spoken about so many times, is that it isn’t a choice. When you’re wired this way, you no less choose to feel your feelings than you choose to feel the wind or the sun on your face. So in a lot of ways, it feels non-negotiable, that there IS no control over it at all.

But this quote – I don’t know, you know how sometimes people can say something or you can wonder something, but it’s not until you hear it in the right way at the right time, and then it finally clicks?

I can feel lightly WHILE feeling deeply. It’s an AND, not a BUT/OR.

I can try, I won’t always succeed, but I can try to embrace it without letting the quicksand pull me down. I can feel it but stay in the shallow end. I can experience it but just dip a toe in it.

It just made sense.

Feel lightly while feeling deeply.

New mantra.