In Search of All Things Beautiful

I wanted to start this post with apologies for absenses, for reasons for time away, for all of those things you feel you have to say when you stopped doing a thing and hid for a good long while. But...I am not going to! Because that's not what I am here for. I'm here to be a compassionate joyful being, so let's do that instead. 

One of the compliments I get a lot is how open I am, how I am really good at small joy and delight and making people feel cozy and comfortable. I've been thinking about that a lot lately, and what that means and how it works and how I make it happen...and my brain just stops. Like...I don't know! There's no secret sauce, it's just...I think about all the times in my life I felt like I didn't fit, that I was unhappy and lonely and how much that hurt. So I seek joy, first and foremost, and I make sure I can make room for people to also feel that joy. Can it be that simple?

I have been praying with some friends lately, just because. I kinda forgot how to pray for a while, which sounds silly because as a Baha'i, we have all these amazing prayers that Baha'u'llah and Abdu'l-Baha and The Bab revealed for us, but there's a difference, I think, between "I can read these words out loud like a parrot repeating stuff they've heard but don't understand" and "My heart is using this to talk to God". But slowly, I am figuring out how to open that part of me again. It feels good to sprinkle those drops of joy into the world, slowly, on my own terms.

This quote has been on my mind a lot, too. It feels like a HUGE ask, to be a centre of attraction, just by...being. How does that even work?
 

At first I decided I couldn't ever do this, that I wouldn't ever be enough of the right things. I think of all the ways Baha'is talk about Abdu'l-Baha as like our best and brightest example of how to do all of the Baha'i everything, and my brain just stalls out. I might like cats and I might be good at sharing cake, but I can't ever do all of these things! I can't! It's impossible! I'm never going to get all of these things right enough to ever have the people of a city unquestionably say I'm a Baha'i....can I? 

One of the things I'm re-learning lately, though, is that it doesn't have to be an all or nothing proposition. Sure, I might be SUPER bad at things some days, but God made me and wanted a me just like me in the world, so I might not be perfect, but I'm here for something. 

So I will keep loving on people, I will keep dancing to my music when I walk, I'll keep sharing cake and helping neighbours figure out Zoom, I'll keep being all of my authentic self, because I think that's how we do this. We exist, we breathe, we love, we admit we don't have it all together, but that we're going to keep trying. And we say prayers, we cry, we laugh, we dance, we tell people how awesome we think they are. If we keep showing love, compassion, and honestly share of ourselves, then that's how people will see how Baha'is are. 

We're not perfect. And that's okay! We don't have to be. In fact, some of my best conversations about Baha'i life have come from me admitting how often I feel like I am secretly three trash pandas in a trench coat desperately pretending that we're a whole and functioning adult. Because it takes off some of that weird expectation that faith needs perfection. It doesn't! We're all messy. 

Love yourselves, friends, even when you're messy. You're always worth that love. I'll remind you of that, endlessly and always. 

In Midnights, In Cups of Coffee

This post is horribly overdue - I should have posted it about three weeks ago. But...life is what it is, right now and time and space feel weird and strange, so here we are.

I have been a Baha'i for an entire year, now. I formally declared in a friend's living room three days before Naw Ruz in 2019, and here we are, in a brand new year. This year looks a whole lot different than the last one, but not all for the negative. So...I figured, in light of all the hard things in the world right now, I'd talk about some of the awesome good that has come out of life in the last year.

Being part of the Baha'i community here has...exploded my life in a lot of really neat ways. I know a lot more people locally than I ever did, and they have showed me such amazing love. A friend recently said something about all the Baha'is they knew being amazingly kind humans, and...oh, they are not wrong. The ways these people have accepted me, in my altogether true, and have helped me find ways to serve and grow alongside them has been astonishing. These are the people of my heart, and I am so glad Baha'u'llah has helped me find them.

My husband is here now! We did the immigration dance, and he came here in June last year, on our second wedding anniversary. I am so incredibly grateful he's here - especially now. Having someone to talk to, to snuggle up to, to play video games with, to cook with...it's still magical in a million ways. I know a lot of people prayed for us and hoped for us and helped us along the way, and I still am sometimes startled and delighted that we got here.

I've found a lot of strengths inside myself I didn't know I had. I'm willingly going out and being social and attending lots of devotionals and other community events now - because my community has made me feel safe and welcome. And sure, it helps that right now they're video chats so I can do it from the comfort of my computer chair at home, but still - I love that there is a place for me to be a part of such an awesome community who is trying really hard to be a force for such good in the world.

I've been making our Baha'i community newsletter every nineteen days for a while now - I've learned so much about design and accessibility and how to make sure that people get the news and information they need in a way that's easy, aesthetically pleasing, and not too intimidating. I've really enjoyed learning the programs I'm using, and seeing how happy this connection to each other has made others in my community. It doesn't feel like I am doing something all that big, but here we are.

I've started recording myself reading various books from my childhood, as a way to spread some joy in the world. I'm posting them on Facebook and Twitter, and it's just been fun to share these happy things in the world, to give people a moment to breathe, to forget the world outside, and just enjoy a fun thing.

This year has been a lot of change. A lot of new things, a lot of hard things, and the world feels like it's a whole lot of struggle right now. So I thought focusing on some bright moments might help. We're going to get through this together, friends. As the Universal House of Justice reminded the Baha'is of the world in a Naw Ruz letter they sent us a short time ago, "However difficult matters are at present...humanity will ultimately pass through this ordeal, and it will emerge on the other side with greater insight and with a deeper appreciation of its inherent oneness and interdependence." We're in this together, my lovelies. We've got each other, and we're gonna make it through. The world will not be quite the same, but there are still flowers that are gonna bloom and birds that are gonna sing and somehow, we'll find a way. Take care of each other, love each other..

I hope to hear about the things that made your heart bubble up with joy over this past year, and maybe even what you're looking forward to in the months to come. We've got this. Today might be hard, but tomorrow will come. It might be hard too, but that's okay. We'll face it together.

The Old Voice Warning Me

When I like a thing, I tend to...really like it. Almost to the exclusion of everything else. When I was in my Hamilton (the musical, not the city) phase, I read Chernow's book about Hamilton (that was SO LONG), I memorized the whole soundtrack, I followed every Twitter thread and video and anything I could find that was remotely related. I listened to literally almost nothing else for months.

Then...at some point, I stopped. I was done. My brain wandered off to something else, and I haven't really listened to the soundtrack since. I still like it, I want to see the play eventually, but when I had the chance to join people in the random lottery style lineup for tickets for the eventual Toronto debut of it....I didn't really bother. (Saved me a bunch of money, I suppose, I heard tickets weren't cheap.) It's no longer a hyperfocus.

This is how I like things. I get into them, with my whole self for a while, then I'm done. I've done it with numerous craft projects (cross-stitch, crochet, among others), languages (Russian, mostly), I do it with stage plays (Hamilton, RENT, In the Heights (that one's still an active focus)).

When I found the Baha'i Faith...I kinda fell in with both feet. There are a few days around when I declared where I didn't sleep a lot, I was just kinda floating in a lot of reading and a lot of wondering and some very patient friends who let me ask them a lot of questions. I have read (and continue to read) as many books about the Faith I can get my hands on. (Yes, I did read Lights of Guidance cover to cover. It was actually pretty interesting. I learned a lot.)

I hyperfocused, hard. I wanted to know everything all at once. I still do, although I've kinda realized there's more than I'll ever know, or fully understand and that's okay. I read a lot and I tried to be everywhere and do everything and I reached a point right after the Bicentenary in October where my body was like "okay, enough, breathe a little".

So...I've been breathing a little. I still love Baha'u'llah and His message with my whole heart, I still go to Feast when I can and I usually have at least one Baha'i adjacent book in my book rotation (right now, it's Creating a New Mind, by Paul Lample). But maybe I don't go to every single devotional that's within reasonable transit distance, maybe I let myself read a few more romance novels before tackling more Adib Taherzadeh.

It's hard not to feel guilty. I keep hearing the voice in the back of my head that tells me that maybe this is just another hyperfocus. Every time I forget my obligatory prayer, or I can't make it to Feast, or I don't go to someone's devotional because I have something else I'm doing, I worry. I worry I'm just going to some day just...drift out of this.

It's kinda scary to admit that, out loud. I talk about how the Faith has changed my life (and oh my gosh, it really has, but that's another story for another day), how I love my community, how I like that I have a way to participate within my own capacity for service with the newsletter and the social media bits. But I don't talk so much about how I am scared my brain is just going to decide I'm done, someday.

I know people will tell me that if it's important, it will stay. The way I've kept friendships alive and my marriage alive and my cat alive - they're important, beyond hyperfocus. The things that are part of the very core of me, those don't go away. I'd love to believe that my Faith is in there too, in the core of me. But I don't know yet. In the grand scheme of my life, I've been doing this Baha'i stuff for....maybe 3 percent of my entire existence?

I know the answer is to just keep on keeping on, the way I do. To keep finding ways to serve the Cause, to keep connecting with my local reality and my friends and my life, and to keep integrating the Baha'i concepts into my everything, as I've been doing. But I thought it might be good to also talk about being scared. I don't think we do that enough, admit we're scared sometimes. We all want to be good people doing good things in good ways that don't let people down.

So hi. I'm Ash, I'm not always good at this, and sometimes I get scared. Sit with me, if you're scared. We don't gotta even talk about it, we can just be scared together, and then we can maybe keep walking, lanterns held high, pushing back the dark.

Forever Flicker in Closeup

I am...not a small person. I take up space. I'm 6 ft tall, and roughly 300lbs. I'm a giant, and I love it. I don't care to be tiny - my body serves me well, and does a lot of amazing things for me and with me. It gets me where I need to go, it lets me give really good hugs, it's good for a lot. I'm used to taking up space, it's not a new concept. I thought me and my body were on pretty good terms - I love it, it loves me, I make sure to feed it vegetables more often than cake, I rest when I need to, all of that good stuff. I'm not perfect, but I try.

But...lately, I've discovered that me and my body aren't always as good at talking to each other as I thought. I've started doing bellydance - very casual intro stuff taught by someone I very much value. It's fun, but...it's hard. And not just physical work hard - that I expected. I expected learning to move in new ways using new muscles would be an adjustment, and it is. What I didn't expect, was how much my brain make my body resist.

It's supposed to be about surrender - about letting the music show you what it wants, how your body should move. It's a conversation, it's freedom...it's a lot of me forgetting where my feet are, because there's a disconnect somewhere in my middle. It's me being terrified to move, to flow, to let go. It's not about how I will look - I'm a  fat human, I'mma gonna wobble like a giant jello. It's about...moving and taking up the room and not being good at it and letting myself feel it and move in ways that aren't "proper", are just feeling and sensuality maybe and just...surrendering.

I never realized how tightly I hold myself. I try so hard to make sure I take up just enough space, but not too much space, that any of myself doesn't touch anyone sitting beside me on the bus, that I am as small as I can be so that people don't call me out on the ways they find my size offensive or annoying. My husband remarks on how my shoulders are always tight, from hours of holding myself just so. I don't even realize I'm doing it, most of the time. I'm just used to accepting I take up space, and hoping that enough other people don't notice in uncomfortable ways til I get through the day.

I have no desire to lose lots of weight (and I know how impossible, statistically, that all is anyhow). I'm cool with being soft and curved and how my butt fills my jeans. I just...don't know how to move, how to let go. how to feel the beat of the music, that audacious conversation, and to let go long enough to let myself be a part of it. Anyone who has gone dancing with me has heard me refer to myself as an electrocuted octopus, because I don't know how to just...let the music talk, without all of my brain screaming at it about how this is NOT OKAY.

I'm trying to undo that. I'm trying to get through years of purity culture, of church teaching me that True Love Waits and the world insisting that as a person in a woman-shaped meat suit...I need to be quiet and submissive and how dare I enjoy this magical gift of a body that God gave me.

I'm *done*. I'm tired! I don't wanna listen. Maybe I will make a terrible bellydancer. Maybe my limbs WILL be everywhere and maybe I *can't * figure out the 1-2-3 beat and maybe I will just be all jello all over the place....but maybe...that's okay. maybe it's okay to just...love myself in all of my learning to let go, to surrender, to let myself be a part of that conversation.

Abdu'l-Baha reminds us that we should "[r]eflect upon the inner realities of the universe, the secret wisdoms involved, the enigmas, the inter-relationships, the rules that govern all. For every part of the universe is connected with every other part by ties that are very powerful and admit of no imbalance, nor any slackening whatever." I am connected with every other bit of the world, with the music and sounds and feelings and people and everything. I'm allowed, even encouraged, to be a part of that. We're all one thing, many pieces of one whole. So I'm not letting go, so much, as just...letting myself feel the music and be one with it, and find the ways it is tied to me and I am tied to it.

After all, as one of my most favourite quotes from Abdu'l-Baha reminds me, "Consider the flowers of a garden. Though differing in kind, color, form, and shape, yet, inasmuch as they are refreshed by the waters of one spring, revived by the breath of one wind, invigorated by the rays of one sun, this diversity increaseth their charm, and addeth unto their beauty. How unpleasing to the eye if all the flowers and plants, the leaves and blossoms, the fruits, the branches and the trees of that garden were all of the same shape and color! Diversity of hues, form and shape, enricheth and adorneth the garden, and heighteneth the effect thereof. In like manner, when divers shades of thought, temperament and character, are brought together under the power and influence of one central agency, the beauty and glory of human perfection will be revealed and made manifest."

So maybe right now I'm just a shaky little sapling in the wind, but it's a start. I am giving myself permission, right now, to let go, to move, to stop letting the old world drag me down by my toes. If we wanna change the world, we gotta learn how to move. So...I'm gonna dance.

My Forever Echoes in the Dark

September has been...a tricky month. My heart has been sad, a lot. There's been a lot that has happened, especially in the last couple weeks, that has brought me to awful moments of tears and vulnerability, and I am just...exhausted.

There was lots of good in this month, weddings and birthdays and small joys like hockey games and packing boxes for my move and so on, but there's also been a lot of hard, sad stuff for me and for people I love very much.

It's hard, sometimes, to make room for hard sad awful feelings. It's so easy to just convince yourself that you can go and feel it later, that you have to shove it into a box and paste on a smile and keep going as if nothing is wrong and nothing hurts. After all, no one wants to sit with us in our sad, right?

One of the things I am really coming to value this week is the idea of just...sitting in the quiet with someone. Sometimes you don't need to have words. Sometimes, it's okay to not want to talk about things all the time, to just sit and know someone else is there, but that there's no expectations you *do* anything or solve anything or discuss anything.

'Abdu'l-Baha reminds us that "humanity is bowed down with trouble, sorrow and grief, no one escapes; the world is wet with tears; but, thank God, the remedy is at our doors. Let us turn our hearts away from the world of matter and live in the spiritual world! It alone can give us freedom! If we are hemmed in by difficulties we have only to call upon God, and by His great Mercy we shall be helped." (Paris Talks, pp. 109-110) So....maybe I can sit with God, quietly, and feel rested, too. 

A lot of this week, I've been trying to reframe my prayer and contemplative time (where I read the Writings, or other Baha'i related books, etc) as just...me sitting quietly with God and Baha'u'llah. I don't always have to say stuff, They know what's in my heart, and why I'm feeling the way I do, but it's quiet, and contemplative, and I can just exist, quietly, and breathe for a bit. I know the world will come back full force and require my attention again, but for those moments, it's okay that everything's not okay. 

My husband and I talk sometimes about how it's okay to just...need to be a lump in the blankets, to not be social so much and just want to cuddle quietly or just sit in the same room, doing our own things, knowing the other person is there if we need them. I've really come to value that, lately. It's not that we don't love each other enough that we're avoiding each other, it's that we love each other so much that we know that sometimes, we just need someone to sit with us, to let us be where we are and feel whatever we're feeling. 

So, dear friends, I ask the same of you. Check in with the people you love and care for. Ask them if they'd like to talk, or do something, or if they'd just like to sit with a cup of tea in the silence with you. Lean on each other. Love each other. One of my favorite illustrations from a Frog and Toad book sums this up nicely: 

Sometimes, that's all you need. 

Could I Rise Above the Flood

The world lately seems so angry and frustrated. Heck, I'm angry and frustrated too. It's hard not to be, not to feel powerless when there's things you need that seem to be constantly dancing just out of reach, when it feels like you try so hard and so long and nothing comes of it. It's hard not to feel like Charlie Brown and the football, a little. 

I've been working through one of the Junior Youth Empowerment Program (JYEP for short) books with a dear friend of mine lately - it's called Breezes of Confirmation, and it basically talks about the idea of putting in effort, and God confirming those efforts (framed mostly around growing up and figuring out what sort of career to follow, or what role you will play in your family and neighbourhood). It's aimed at 11-14 year olds, and honestly, I love it a lot. It takes this big scary idea of "how do I know I am on the right path", and makes it approachable.

So, in the midst of all this anger and frustration and not getting what you think you need, how do you sit with it? How do you stop from constantly feeling like every job rejection, every broken promise, every "we should hang out" that never actually results in seeing your friends, every time you try to do something nice and it falls flat, is like Lucy yanked that darn football away again?

Maybe you don't. Maybe you feel SUPER MAD about it for a bit, because, well, feelings are feelings, and it's okay to feel them. Maybe, if you're me, you ask your husband to go for a walk with you even though it's dark because you just want to get out of the house, out of the place that reminds you things aren't where you want them to be just yet. (We're moving in a few weeks, so things feel weirdly stuck and in-between right now.)

But then what? You have your anger squid moment, you get your ice cream, then what? How do you keep going? How do you know when God's saying "hey yo it's all good just wait a few" or "hey yes you are on the right path, it's just longer than you think" or "oh maybe you should turn left here at this stop sign"? 

A lot of it comes down to trust. We are reminded to "[n]ever lose thy trust in God. Be thou ever hopeful, for the bounties of God never cease to flow upon man. If viewed from one perspective they seem to decrease, but from another they are full and complete. Man is under all conditions immersed in a sea of God’s blessings."(Abdu’l Baha, Selections from the Writings of Abdu’l-Baha, p. 205.) And sure, it's nice to know we're immersed in that sea, but sometimes those blessings are hard for us to see. It's hard to have trust, but isn't that what faith is all about?

We gotta start with putting in the effort. If we don't give God a place to start, He's got nothing to work with. It'd be nice if He just dropped things in our laps, but as Abdu'l-Baha reminds us, "Make thou an effort that thou mayest take thy place under the sun and receive an abundant share of its dazzling light." If we just sit at home in the dark with the blinds closed...God can shine all the light on us that He can possibly manage, but we'll never see it. It's like...God wants to rain good things down on us, but we've got to be ready. As a friend put it the other day, if we're just standing on our porch in a raincoat and boots with an umbrella up, the rain can come down forever, and we'll never feel it. We'll be dry, but trees don't really grow well in deserts.

Heck, Baha'u'llah himself reminds us of this, in one of the Hidden Words - "O SON OF BEING! Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant." So, we do our best. We live and love and try and wait and maybe sometimes we do have a temper tantrum or ice cream for dinner or whatever it is that we do when we are just our most vibrating anger squid full of feelings, but God sees us, He sees us trying, and one of these days, we'll kick that football so fast and so hard it'll bounce into the next neighbourhood. 

Hope You Laugh More than You Cry

Summer's over, it's turning into fall, and it feels like everything is changing. The leaves are going to lose their colour, I'm starting to pack to move into a new apartment, my husband is looking for work (he immigrated here at the end of June)...so much is going to be different by the time the year ends. I've kinda been...swamped under it all. Work is tricky right now and it is taking a lot of my patience, and there are so many details to figure out with my move, and there are SO MANY boxes to pack. Plus, we're managing on one income right now (but God willing, not for much longer!). So much going on, and very few moments to squish it all into, let alone to just breathe and...not think about any of it.

Change is hard. I've lived in the same apartment in the basement of a house for almost 7 years, I know my neighbourhood inside and out. I know when the buses come and go, I know where the good bread is found, and the best spot to get coffee. Admittedly, I'm only moving 3 kilometers away, but still. New neighbourhood, different sector of my Baha'i community, different apartment (but no more laundromat trips! We will have on-site laundry!). New patterns of life, new struggles, new challenges, new joys and delights.

I'm trying to just sit with all of this change, and trust that God's going to see us through, as he always has. I might be saying Remover of Difficulties ("Is there any Remover of difficulties save God?  Say: Praised be God!  He is God!  All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!") over and over and over (it's a nice short prayer, and I find it helps even as just a mantra to keep me chill), but that's because I know He's got us, and is holding us and guiding us through this. Even if I am shaking in my boots most of the time and have cried from exhaustion and stress more than I want to admit.

There's a quote I found recently from Abdu'l-Baha that I really like - "Man must turn to the light and not think that the form of the lamp is essential, for the lamp may be changed; but he who longs for light welcomes it from whatever source it comes." (Divine Philosophy, p. 33). It reminds me that in the end, it doesn't much matter where I live or what's going on, as long as I know where to find my light. Maybe it's a flashlight and not a big fancy Tiffany lamp, or it's flickering firelight or a single leftover birthday candle - what matters is that I know where it is and I look to it. So I carry a bit of God's light with me in the prayers I know and the quotes from the Writings that float in my head, and I fill myself with light during my Ruhi circles or Nineteen Day Feast or reading all of the Baha'i books I can get my hands on. I spend time with my friends and my loved ones, I take time for myself when I need it, and I remind myself that even if I was the only Baha'i on an island somewhere, isolated and alone, I have God's love and Baha'u'llah's guidance written on my heart.

So I can face all this change. I'm not doing it alone, and maybe right now there's more tears than laughter, but I'm making my way.

God is Bigger than the Boogieman

 I watched a LOT of Veggietales growing up. I still sing the hairbrush song when things go missing, I know that everyone needs a waterbuffalo, and I will still lament that I've never been to Boston in the fall. (Apologies if these songs are stuck in your head now too!)

I've been singing "God is Bigger than the Boogieman" a lot to myself lately. Partially because it reminds me God is also bigger than Godzilla, and I've been contemplating finally watching my first ever Godzilla movie on the advice of a friend who knows more about Godzilla than just about anyone else I've met. But if I had to be truthful (and I've done Ruhi 1, I know that "truthfulness is the foundation of all human virtues"!), it's also partially because I am being chased by the biggest anxiety dinosaurs right now.

It's not even that anything's wrong, per se - I've finally gotten to find out what living with my husband full time is like (IT IS AMAZING. Like even boring adulting like laundry is great.) and it's summer and work isn't too awful and I have an awesome Baha'i community I belong in and I have friends who I get to spend lots of time with as the world allows.

But that's the frustrating thing - like the anxiety dinosaur points out, none of this is logical. It's my brain being a tricksy tricksy meatpile. So what can help me feel better? 

Abdu'l-Baha points out in his Paris Talks that "[t]he mind and spirit of man advance when he is tried by suffering. The more the ground is ploughed the better the seed will grow, the better the harvest will be. Just as the plough furrows the earth deeply, purifying it of weeds and thistles, so suffering and tribulation free man from the petty affairs of this worldly life until he arrives at a state of complete detachment. His attitude in this world will be that of divine happiness. Man is, so to speak, unripe: the heat of the fire of suffering will mature him." Basically, all this fear stuff is teaching me to let go. It's not easy! When my brain starts going in mad circles, remembering I am just a small sapling trying to reach the sky feels impossible. I feel like I can dig my roots in deep and stretch my branches as far as they'll go, but it still feels like I can't possibly be enough, do enough, feel enough, detach enough. I am too small, and the world feels too big. And I know that the Bab reminds me that God "maketh victorious whomsoever He pleaseth, through the potency of His behest" (and there's a REALLY good song version of that by Badasht, here, that I love singing), but sometimes even that feels hard for me to grasp, because I feel like I am too small to even be worth the notice.

Luckily, once again, I turn to the stuff I've been learning in the Ruhi Institute courses (which are AMAZING and I love them. Seriously. Even if you're not Baha'i, I bet you'd be able to learn some cool stuff out of some of this) and it's got an answer for me from the Writings about how it's perfectly fine, because God's got my back. "Take thou thy portion of the ocean of His grace, and deprive not thyself of the things that lie hidden in its depths. Be thou of them that have partaken of its treasure. A dewdrop out of this ocean would, if shed upon all that are in the heavens and on the earth, suffice to enrich them with the bounty of God" (Arising to Serve, page 8) I love this passage for two reasons - it reminds me that I am SUPPOSED to reach out for God's grace, that I am not supposed to deprive myself of it, and also that His grace is SO big and SO much and SO powerful, that I need just the teeny tiniest bit to be able to do great things. 

So even if I am scared, even if I don't think I know what I'm doing, even if all I can hear is the roaring of the anxiety dinosaur, I can still rest assured that I'm not alone, that God's there, helping me grow and be strong and be the best tree in the garden that I possibly can, full of delicious fruit that I can share with everyone. And for me, that's enough. 

x