“Let no one keep you from your journey, no rabbi or priest, no mother who wants you to dig for treasures she misplaced, no father who won’t let one life be enough, no lover who measures their worth by what you might give up, no voice that tells you in the night it can’t be done.

Let nothing dissuade you from seeing what you see or feeling the winds that make you want to dance alone or go where no one has yet to go.

You are the only explorer. Your heart, the unreadable compass. Your soul, the shore of a promise too great to be ignored.”

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Full disclosure: These beautiful words are not mine. They were written by poet and philosopher Mark Nepo. You can read his poem, Breaking Surface, in its original form here. I recently came across this wonderful poem and it really captures how I’ve been feeling lately. But to be honest, I have always had difficulty reading and understanding poetic verse, and I find that often I understand a poem better if I transcribe it into prose form.

My apologies Mr. Nepo for butchering your work…but it helped.