I stole candy from little kids on Halloween.
This is one of my worst moments.
Those who know me, those who have a collection of great Cliff moments, will forgive me. They will cover this faded fragment with the glitter of my good-doings.
Those who don’t know me, well, they have fewer pieces of the collage and this particular piece, this horrible blood-red moment — so vivid and dramatic — it’ll probably go somewhere in the center of it all. It’ll dominate the picture.
It’s a terrible decision-making practice but we do this everyday: we let one piece dominate the picture.
As we thumb-scroll through comments, as we click on those little sideways triangles, we gobble up somebody’s worst piece and we claim to know them fully, or, at least enough, to make a call.
It’s the safe thing to do, but this kind of safe is dangerous. It keeps our little worlds little, and shrinking, our boundaries closing in on us like a brush fire.
Bravery takes risk. Growth requires space. Love goes in all directions.
To keep ourselves whole and expanding, we must dare to learn more, to allow a fragment to be just a fragment, to allow an image to become a person.
We must dare to see the whole picture.
Or, at least one more piece.