i want to say something about softness because i think it gets misunderstood. softness is not naivety. it is not an absence of experience or the luxury of someone who has never been through anything. some of the softest people i know have been through the most. their softness is not innocence — it is a decision they make every day, in full knowledge of what cruelty looks like, to remain open anyway.
to keep feeling things. to keep extending kindness even when it hasn't always been returned. that kind of softness is one of the bravest things i've ever witnessed.
it would be so much easier to close. to decide that the world has shown you enough to justify shutting down. and sometimes, temporarily, that shutdown is necessary. it's protection. it's survival. but the people who come back from it — who choose softness again after it's cost them something — those people contain a kind of quiet strength that hardens never will.
@diverse_.writes