The Apple in Our Hand

One thing I keep learning doing this work, and need to, is that opening up to the hardest & most devastating parts of life has the potential to reveal the most worthy and wonderful parts of being alive. And there are people, so many of them, just behind the thinnest walls you pass as you go through your everyday life, getting treatments and healing, expanding & opening, dying or becoming more fully alive than ever before.

I walked into this cancer patient’s hospital room yesterday doing my work with UCSF Art for Recover and left with the deep impact of someone I’ll never forget.

Tears welling up in his electric eyes, looking out the window at a horizon of construction sites, but seeing it like the last most precious thing he’d ever see, he said these words to me like they’re the only thing that matters... and I got the message: “We spend so much time chasing what we want out of life, we forget that we’re actually living the dream. We have the apple in our hand and maybe all we need to do is shine it a bit to see how perfect it is...”

And I love his sign... because it encourages us to hold on to what’s worth fighting for while honoring what we must let go.