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Tim Fitzmaurice

LIFT

â€œMan is indeed that creature who, if he sees an object on the floor and wants to see it on the table, is obliged to lift it.â€ Simone Weil, On Science, Necessity and the Love of God, 1941.

Pick up your things

Love is not a destination
but a direction
and an exhausting climb.

To be human is to lift whatever has fallen:
To pick up your things,
like your mother said, your father said,
Pick up your things!

They were only saying:
Be everything.
Move everything.
Be everything humanly possible.

Love is a direction and the energy
to move everything in that loving direction
and not to be astonished, frozen
because you are not there yet.

Do not be paralyzed by fear.
Donâ€™t be anesthetized
by the ordinary poisons of the world.

The world is full of those darts
that they use
to put tigers to sleep.

If you are stuck,
your feet buried
up to the ankles,
to your knees,

Then lift them

Love is a direction. So love yourself
and others and the world.
Forgive what you can.
And lift your feet.

And when you see something
or someone who has fallenâ€”
lift them.

These are your things.
Pick up your things!