When the going gets tough, the tough retract. I used to think I was not tough. I am soft. I am vulnerable. I am easily wounded, highly sensitive, and a sharp tone in a voice can ruin my day. But there is a toughness that can encompass those things – a toughness that protects and surrounds those vulnerabilities so as to mine them for art and spirit and so on.
So when things get difficult, I do not stay to fight – I withdraw, slip into my turtle shell and go inside. And sometimes from inside the shell, I will send out a little message from the softness, a little flag of resistance, sometimes of revolution.
But when all the world comes knocking, it’s time to withdraw even further. That is where the quiet is.
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