The sensitive types...

 I never post any of my “free writing”. The kind that starts without a point, a direction, just a feeling, the beating of my heart, thud…thud… and like an itch, which may or may not be safe to scratch, I scratch it… I will share this however… for sometimes when you poke a finger in… it creates a little hole, or widens one that already existed… and perhaps, just perhaps, that is that where Rumi’s words, “the place where the light enters”, ring true.

 

Some just feel more, see more, sense more, intuit more… hurt more. It’s a blessing. It’s a curse.

The sensitive types are the ones who write the most beautiful poems, paint the prettiest pictures, create astounding works of art. They are often also, a little bit broken. From all that they feel, all that they sense, all that which hurts within… that they sometimes turn into art.

Van Gogh, Baudelaire and many other I admire led unbearably sad lives, even when they left behind incredible works of art. Many successful artistes have lived far happier lives and continue to do so.

This is not about artistes whose sensitivity and talent have led to great art. This is about the sensitive types, who exist in the day to day, the mundane. Not that there isn’t art in their lives, or creativity and a little bit of craziness, that comes from the brokenness and the sensitivity. They live in a pragmatic, practical world, with rules and expectations, and defined roles to play… like round pegs in square holes. They fool the world. They cover their broken, they draw safe boundaries around their sensitivity, the wounds, all that within, which could possibly hurt. Sometimes the boundaries become walls.  

They live with the those who are not as sensitive. Those who are practical and efficient, and don’t fall apart and hurt as much. They live with those who take reality as it comes, with grace, with practicality, with rationale thinking. They find the best solution. They do what needs to be done. In that is their salvation, their peace. They don’t hurt as much.

They sensitive ones watch them. For they see everything, notice everything. Judgement sneaks in, rationality even. It seems the right way to live, the right way to be. Why then will the brokenness not go away, when they simply do the right thing that needs to be done. Why doesn’t the hurt go away when the make the wisest choice that is to be made.

Whilst inhabiting with the rationale, the pragmatic, the sensible, why does the hurt grow bigger, the hole wider? Why do they feel weirder, like there is something wrong with them for feeling the way they do? Why must they feel broken or empty while making the smart, wise, practical choices that the world expects them to?

How do the sensitive ones embrace their sensitivity whilst living a normal life in a normal world? Like the “happy artistes” from before, some seem to do so. And that seems like a quest worth taking for the sensitive types…

To live their lives, in the openness, and brokenness of their existence, to show off the wounds, and the sore sensitive parts, and feel at home in the world… in a world that allows it, accepts it… a world that allows those parts, those feelings, without dismissing them simply because they can’t see them, feel them, be them. The world would be lovely. For we need each other to balance it out. To balance us out…