We were all born soft with souls as sweet as water, as wild as fire, as clear as the wind, and as gentle as the earth. Somewhere along the way, someone convinced you that the world will not be kind to those who are sensitive. Somewhere along the way, someone convinced you that love is conditional, and that the things you love will destroy you. Somewhere along the way, someone convinced you that your softness is a weakness.

You believed them. You believed that the magical, mystical, breathing, beating thing in the center of your personal universe was something weak. Your heart became a burden, a disadvantage, and a terrible inconvenience. You started distrusting and resenting this soft part of you that was so nakedly vulnerable. You built walls around it like the rest of them, and they praised, applauded and rewarded you for it. So, you assumed you were making progress. You thought that you were doing the right thing, until you experienced something different.

Maybe it was a person, and the way their eyes sparkled as they saw the world with a child-like awe and unceasing wonder. Maybe it was the burning passion with which you watched someone set on fire while doing something they loved. Maybe it was simple words strung together on paper or flashing images on a screen that awakened something unimaginably deep within you. Something elusive that you couldn’t put a finger on, something untouchable that was just out of your reach. You couldn’t get in, you couldn’t get through. You had locked yourself inside your hardness, and you didn’t know how to get out.

Like a moth to a flame, you were drawn to the warmth of their inner fire. Like a sinking ship, you were pulled to the depths of the oceans within them. Like rain to soft, wet, clay, you opened up and yielded to them. Like a leaf in the wind, you were inspired to follow after them. You stood there looking outside-in as they cast a spell on you, and you couldn’t understand how something as soft as fire, water, wind and earth could be so magical.

The water began seeping in, and the tide was taking everything with it. The fire was rising, and its flames were destroying everything. The wind was whistling, and blowing away everything known and familiar. The earth was shaking, and ripping your core apart. For the first time in your life, you felt an indescribable, all-encompassing fear. This fear was what they had warned you about, and so you did what they taught you to do. With your tail between your legs you ran, far, far away from this strangely powerful thing.

It stayed away until you were quiet, and then it returned. A gentle voice in the back of your head, a touch of magic still lingering in your consciousness. You ignored it, hoping it would leave you alone but it came back again and again, each time louder than it was before. You tried to run and hide from your own demons, until the voice inside you was screaming and begging for surrender.

You had a choice then, and you still have a choice now.

You see, destruction is not always the end, sometimes it’s the beginning of a transformation, a resurrection of what was once lost, a rebirth of something wonderful. If you allow it to pass, it will strike you with the magnanimity of crashing waves, the incinerating touch of licking flames, a powerful gust of stormy wind, and the mighty jolt of a shattering earthquake.

There will come a time when you will let yourself give in to a life-changing epiphany, and you will realize that soft is strong. Soft is changeable. Soft is malleable. Soft is adaptable. Soft is natural. Soft is you, the real you, and when you remember to be soft again, you will finally, finally be free.