Love letter to the word 'is'

Dearest ‘is’,

You are such a tiny word. Yet, to me you seem so very powerful. I have used you so many times, but today it feels like I finally see you, maybe even fathom you better. 

You are made to start with a comprehensible linear line of predictability, with a surprising bubble of the imagination in the letter ‘i’ and then with linguistic anti-climax you have next placed the curviest, most unpredictable, dancing, flowing form of the letter ’s’. 

It’s like you embody the lofty wisdom of the yin and yang, the animus and anima, the feminine and the masculine, the wave and the particle within the tiniest footprint a word could take up on a page. 

Dear ‘is’ you teach me so much. You teach me how paradoxes can sit next to each other, quietly in long lengthy sentences as a secret ode to contradictions. 

You un-behest to me ground my monologues and opinions in the present moment. You guide my monkey mind into ‘now’ness. This is. What is. How is. 

Maybe you are the most powerful word of the entire language of English. Would you accept my pedestaling of you such, because you somehow also seem a little shy? 

At the cost of making you blush further, I also see you as the linguistic equivalent of ‘I am’. Like a secret prophet hidden in grammar to exalt everything ever said into its ‘is’ness. Trees, objects, insults, obituaries, judgments, venerations all get bathed with their deserved ‘is’ness by just your ignorant use from loud emotions and rowdy thoughts of us humans. 

You also have within you a healthy emptiness. IS. Like you could be filled with anything. Or nothing and still be complete. 

Perhaps I am loving you such because you are also a mirror to me. In you being you, perhaps you are also a reminder to me to just ‘is’ my current heart brokenness. So maybe you are reflecting my own beautiful contradictions, my own predictable unpredictability, my iam-ness, my emptiness, and fullness. 

Thanks, dearest ‘is’ mirror and much more. For your potent ‘is’ing and all its teachings.

Much Love
Warrior Goddess

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash