I spin around all day
and make up laws for myself.
They’re too much to bear
so through clenched teeth
I sling them onto you
smear them across your face
and theirs
and theirs
holding you all hostage
with the same impossible tasks
and expectations
that I fell so miserably short in front of.
And the law always boomerangs back
gut-punching me with even more intensity.
No one escapes the law.
Even a devoted dismissal of the law
becomes its own law.
We are all law machines
making up rules
holding ourselves to impossibilities
and then casting them away
only to receive them again
with even more intensity
before the vicious loop begins anew
magnifying with each cycle.
And then grace enters
from somewhere unheeded.
Grace mysteriously makes its way in
through the cracks and the crevices
of the law-driven
human experience
and frees us
if even temporarily
lessening our load
before the spinning starts again.
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This post was previously published on Medium.com and is republished here with permission from the author.
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Photo credit: istockphoto.com