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And this is for you who spends as much time in your head as you do in the “real world.”
There are now studies to prove it—that there are people with the highly sensitive trait—but you didn’t need studies to know of its existence.
You didn’t need proof to be able to walk into a room and feel the reverberations of other people’s emotions.
You didn’t need evidence to seethe under the imprint of misdirected anger. To fret under the force of free-falling feelings.
Being “sensitive” has long been a pejorative, but it’s time to discard that once and for all.
For you, the highly sensitive one, have power wrapped in those coils.
In the United States, power resides in the individual—typically the white male individual—in what he can do, what he can accomplish, and what he can become.
Accolades go to the quick-footed, quick-thinking, quick-talking men of power.
But power is deceptive.
Those who are quick to claim power are often hollow from lack of introspection.
What about the artists? The magical realists? The visionaries who build castles in their minds, placing each intricate detail in its proper place?
What about them?
What about you?
Words can crush you. That’s why you’re careful and contemplative in what you say.
Actions can damage you. That’s why you’re steady and thoughtful in what you do.
The world needs the sensitive men and women. It needs your keen insight and calming temperament in a world burning down with fiery rage.
It needs you for your empathy—for your desire to put others’ needs before your own.
In a world that’s losing its ability to feel, you can teach the world how to feel again.
It needs you to take in the horrors of gratuitous violence and show the world how to become whole again.
The world needs less drilling for oil and more mining for thoughts and feelings.
You can be the excavator and restorer of minds and cold, brittle hearts.
This is an ode to the highly sensitive ones—to the ones whose praises hardly get sung, but to whom much praise is deserved.
To the keepers of secrets, the bearers of trust, the menders of family and community.
If ever there is a song that needs to be sung, it is the ode to you, the most sensitive of us all.
Go and use these notes to replace fear with feeling.
Carry forward the song of sensitivity—the one you’ve known all along.
Its stanzas form the structure of your caring resolve—and you are its chords, simultaneously together and free.
When the buildings crumble and fall, when the embers settle and fade, there will only be the song of the sensitive one, of beauty already made.
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This post was originally published on medium.com and is republished with the author’s permission.
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Photo credit: Getty Images
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