Expressing yourself – speaking the little fears, voicing the confusion, giggling the joy, asking the question, dancing the answer, finding some way to shatter the dam that is blocking the flow of you – expressing yourself – in conversation and communion, in the hiddenness of your solitude, everywhere and always – expressing yourself, that is the path to remembering that you belong here, too. The practice: as soon as I sense the tip of the anxious wedge enter me and begin its work of cleaving me apart from the crowded room with silent whispers of separation and not enough, when I sense it beginning, this feeling of I don’t belong here, that’s my cue. Express it. Just begin. Let the words spill out, you don’t have to know where they’re going. They know, and they’ll take care of it. The point is not to speak something brilliant. The point is just to speak. Or if you’re a mover, then forget the words and move. Sing, for goddsake, if you’re a singer. Do it now, the sooner the better. Each word, each gesture, each note, they are all stones in this path of remembering, remembering that you belong here, too, another creator in this endless act of creation. Creation is as much you as it is anything else, incomplete without your offering, so offer it up. It isn’t just for you. It’s for me, too. It’s for all of us. There is solace in silence, no doubt, but madness, too, which putrefies when that which wants to be expressed gets clogged. So express yourself. Oh God, it’s a cliché, but I’ll be goddamned if it isn’t always the way home.