A billion stars go spinning through the night,

Blazing above your head.

But in you is the present that will be,

When the stars are dead.

– Rainer Maria Rilke

In you is the present that will be. The present… the gift. In you is a gift that will exist beyond time out of mind. The gift of Being. These things sound nice, but I don’t think you’re a gift, the mean girl says.

But Mean Girl, you are a gift. You are the gift that reminds me to be kind to myself. You are the gift that teaches me to speak well of myself in front of my children. You are the armor that protects me from other people’s arrows, and what is the point of armor if not to protect something precious.

We look into the mirror, the mean girl and I, and we see all sides of me. The good and the bad, the pure and the polluted, the broken and the whole. Our existence is a gift to us and to all other Beings we share existence with.

“And don’t forget, of course, that getting rid of your ego is the biggest ego trip there is.” – Alan Watts

The mean girl inside my head will always be, just as long as I will always be. We fight and we make up, this mean girl and I. But, when I lay down my head at night and pause my thinking to just exist, I see the pure water of light and shadow rippling into eternity. She is skipping stones of thought across my mind and I can go to her, take her hand, and say, “Peace, be still” and she is a little child, holding my hand, my own eyes staring back at me. We sit to watch the water calm and sleep takes us into unconsciousness.