Imagine the distance 

back to your suffering:

travel as an opportunity

to love back into 

the community of your heart 

those tender aspects 

of your own world 

that 

in their fragile essence 

felt 

the piercing sting 

of 

innumerable sensitivities 

perpetrated by those 

who abandoned themselves.

"You are too sensitive,"
 the chorus resounds--

as if being insensitive were somehow

more fitting and functional

in a world were the threads

connecting our senses to our

sensitivities and ultimately 

our capacity to be sentient

have been forsaken.

They might as well say
"You are too aware,"
Or
"You are affected by what

you need to numb yourself to."

The subtle pressure to be insentient

in this world is not always so subtle

Sensitivity can be pummeled and beat into

submission like it were hot iron ore and not 

the radiant flower it once was in our youth.

We learn how to be tough and hardened---

as if this were learning and not the cruel adaptation

whose price is a vital loss of that foundation 

upon which valid insight forever rests.

This is when I hear that other chorus 

beginning to rise, the one that takes us deep 

into what we know is truer, that,
"You are too insensitive."

We are not sensitive enough. 

We need to become more sensitive,

otherwise we are destined to be the 

pawns and puppets of our own

self-reinforcing ignorance and stupidity.

Feel.... 

Feel everything and let it fill

your raw nerves with the news of the 

day and the secrets of the night.

Feel and let those sensitivities

carry you to your destiny

as one of the ones who knows

they are too sensitive and yet

not sensitive enough. 

Feel your way to 

understanding the consequences

of history's misunderstandings

and trust that those feelings

will foster us a future where 

sensitivity is fully realized 

as the essential basis for

knowledge that has a heart.