It might hurt like hell.

The beauty and the closure and the growth and the forgiveness and the understanding and the love and the family and the money and the joy that you so admirably wait for may never come the way you want it to.

The “other way” that doesn’t hurt may never appear—or work, if it does.

Not pretty, huh? Not sunsets and intertwined fingers and neck strokes and poems.

But the truth.

Sometimes it’s dark.

Sometimes it’s heavy.

And we can’t hide from that forever.

There’s nothing worse than being told that everything’s okay when it’s not. Or that it will be okay when it might not.

I would rather have truth than temporary fluff.

Because after the fluff, what am I left with?

Sometimes life is ugly. And so are grassland fires and volcanic ash. It’s just that, without those things, we’d never have the savanna. And the savanna must be the most beautiful place on the earth.

I want the savanna. Which means I also want the truth. The fire. The ash.

So don’t give me fluff when it’s flames I need.

You can’t grow anything meaningful in fluff.