Put Down the Script and Come In

The room is warm, but you are standing in the draft of the doorway. You watched them laugh at a joke you missed because you were too busy rehearsing your own punchline in the quiet of your head.

You prepared a performance while life happened without you. That gap between where you are and where they are feels like a wall you built yourself, brick by anxious brick.

But the light does not require you to be clever. It does not need you to have the perfect words ready before you step into the circle.

There is a peace that does not depend on your performance, a rest that waits for you to put down the script you've been clutching so tightly. You do not have to earn your place in the laughter by being funny.

You only have to be present. The joke is already over, but the connection is still here, waiting for you to stop talking to yourself and simply come in.