Glass Houses

The first album I ever owned was Billy Joel Glass Houses. The cover shows Billy Joel about to hurl a large rock at his own glass house on Long Island. For me, this image reflects the choice we all have in those moments when we want to react to whatever we are experiencing internally and shatter things to pieces. The truth is we all live in glass houses, and we all have stones to throw.

 As human beings we are going to be constantly faced with challenges that bring up lots of human emotions and urges. This we cannot control. What we can control is how we choose to respond or react to our internal experiences. If we are honest with ourselves regarding this decision-making process, we find it is an incredibly delicate balance to find and embrace our true empowered and fragile nature.  If we lean too far in one direction, we feign control and power through the sheer force and will to shatter whatever we want. This is not true power or control. And those stones eventually turn into boomerangs right back at us. If we lean too far in the other direction, we may disingenuously deny, suppress, or try to escape our feelings and urges, providing some temporary relief but eventually casting us back in the other direction. The truth of the matter is our feelings, particularly the hard ones, are what make us uniquely and beautifully human and have the capacity to teach us the most if we let them.

Somewhere hanging in this delicate balance is a place where we can choose to accept and allow whatever feelings and urges we are experiencing to just be, allowing them to move through us, without escaping them and without reacting to them.  In accessing this space, we can attune to what they might mean and then respond with presence, clarity, and authenticity. This is our true power in its raw and purest form. Embrace it, and let your challenges become your greatest gifts of growth and empowerment.

Happy 2025