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The One Voice. It haunts me like the walls of a glass prison that was built before I can remember. I punched my way out but found myself a bloody mess on the other side. Bitter and bloody with a giant chip on my shoulder and untouchable jagged edges. How many people know what it's like to grieve for their own lifeless self? I hope it's not too many. Such a modern disease.

Being open I find strange and difficult and sometimes awkward, but I'm trying. By the time I was a little older than your son is now I'd buried my real voices inside, where they could be safe, because everything and everyone around me wanted to kill those voices. It was a desperate act to keep something beautiful alive, something I had no words for but which felt like home.

Music will always be my muse. Musicians who never succumbed to The One Anodyne Voice guardened my spheres when I wasn't able to. They kept me hydrated as I trudged through the desert. They kept me dry as I crossed the dark sea. And to my eternal joy they were waiting for me on the other side when I finally got there, fifty years later, at the beginning of my journey. I long to create something worthy of the Memory Keepers, who formed the constellation by which to find my way home by starlight.

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Great writing! I just finished The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. You might want to check it out. I firmly believe that if even a small percentage of humans lived as he suggests, our existence would be renewed before our eyes.

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This reminds me of one creation myth that speaks to me: The One was alone, and since he had created everything, he was bored and unhappy. So he split himself into a thousands of pieces. Each of them had a partial memory of the whole, and could now seek for those parts it didn't remember, from its own unique perspective. Eventually they will all come together again, fulfilled and knowing more than The One started out knowing.

That's a terrible rehash of it. I hope you get the gist. There is no One True Voice. There are many true voices, a kaleidoscope of experiences.

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Your tree is glorious, Bertus. 💜

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Again Amen! Thanks for reminder, for remembering, for going beyond the either/or, even the both/and and being OPEN, funny that showed up today in Wall Street article as best ways for leadership and management of businesses. Being OPEN......

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