On any given day, there’s an impossible paradox in my inbox.

And in my heart.

It might be sorrow about the devastating floods we’re seeing across the USA.

And in the very next second, I might feel a flash of joy about the shiny red nail polish on my fingers.

I’ll deeply recognize how immensely lucky I am, how insanely privileged, and feel gratitude wash down to my toes as I sip wine and look up at the darkening sky– like I am in this photo–  and then an hour later I’ll be completely livid, just batshit furious and outraged, because the fruit flies have invaded the strawberries in my kitchen.

I know.  It’s a little ridiculous.  But it’s true.

The other day, these two email messages flashed in one after another and highlighted exactly how surreal this life can be.  Injustice and heartbreak in Syria, and– hey look!– gorgeous home furnishings from Anthropologie.

For a moment I went to my default, which is shame.

How dare I have so much when others have so little?  How dare I be shallow enough to care about couch cushions when horrible things are happening?

Because I do care.  About both those things.

And here is the thing about you, if you’re reading this– you are someone who CARES.

You care about Syria.  About flood victims.  About the polar caps melting and the state of education and the erosion of childhood and pesticides and the justice system and and and–  no one has to show you graphic documentaries to make you care.

You already care so much that sometimes you want to scream into your silk couch cushions.

And so the last thing you need is for someone to try to shake you out of apathy or coldheartedness!  Graphic, horrifying images don’t wake you up– they rip you open.  And then you wonder why you feel so shaky, so rattled, so uncertain.

You wonder if you’re a wimp if you want to watch Anne of Green Gables instead of the nightly news.  You wonder why you can’t toughen up like other people.  You wonder why you can’t have the thick skin of a badass– you have the opposite of a thick skin, it’s like you have no skin– so that even casual words of criticism can zing right to your core and drop you to your knees.

This incredible sensitivity, sweet pea, isn’t something to get over.  It’s not something that’s wrong with you.

Imagine if you gave someone a powerful electric current, and didn’t explain to them how electricity worked or how to ground it.  Zap.

Imagine if you gave someone a state of the art iPod with wireless roaming, put the earbuds in their ears, and never showed them how to turn the volume down.  Ow.

That’s what it’s like to be someone who’s naturally empathic.  You’re wide open to the world.  You’re grappling with enormous energies and emotions.  You don’t need to hear about the floods in the west or see a docudrama to tap into the suffering of the world– it’s always there, under your skin, unforgettable.

But you’re also open to joy in a way that most people aren’t.  You can look at a flower and feel your cellular structure swoon.  You can hear a wicked drumbeat and feel the heartbeat of the earth.  You can breathe in and out on the tide of galaxies.

Or at least you’re pretty sure you ought to be able to do those things.  It’s just that you never got your instruction manual.

Next Tuesday, I’m doing a free call called “The Beautiful Dreamer’s Guide To Surviving The Real World: how to let your soul soar and keep your feet on the ground.”  It’s a kind of instruction manual for those of you who are the kindred spirits.  You know who you are.

This call isn’t for everyone.  Someone wrote me to inform me that the video I made is totally boring, and that I sound whiny not shiny.  (Yes, they felt the need to write me and tell me that.  Thank you for sharing!!!)  But it didn’t  hurt my feelings, because this is nuanced material.  It’s not for everyone.  It isn’t 3 Quick Tips and 5 Easy Steps and Life Coaching For Dummies.  This is pondering of a subtle sort.

It will definitely appear like navel-gazing to most people.  Especially to those people who watch the news and think, “Yeah, whatever, not MY town.”  And then really enjoy their Cheetos.

But if you find yourself knocked off kilter by suffering, this will help.  If you find yourself ‘too sensitive to live,’ like I joke about myself, this is for you.

Here’s the underlying thread of everything I’ll teach in the call, the whole point of the missing manual I kept waiting to find–

It’s not about toughening.  It’s about stretching.  It’s about creating so much space inside yourself that you are an enormous solar system.  You are designed to contain multitudes.  There is room for all the sorrow in the world, and also all the joy.  It’s about learning how to breathe so deeply into your toes that you send roots down into the ground and feel how strong you can stand.  It’s about learning to listen so high and far that your ears stretch up through the twilight and past the stars and out into the ether.  The music of the cosmos is playing, for anyone who has ears to hear.

This call isn’t for everyone.  But it might be for you.

Next week we’ll return to our regularly scheduled programming.  I’ll probably have more classy, tasteful stories from the bathroom, and more dispatches from crazytown.  So if you want to tap into this slightly more subtle conversation that’s going to quietly happen over on another channel,sign up here right now.

May your week be full of purple sunsets, beautiful shoes, and the deep compassion beneath all things.  And absolutely no fruit flies.