Where Is Love?

~ Bela Johnson ~ 2 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
View all responses

People are fickle.
Emotions vary.

The universe and nature know nothing
of these human fluctuations.
The mountains and the stars simply are.

Their constancy has always given me
a deep sense that I am loved beyond measure.

Why?

Because I exist.

Each day and every night, I witness
sunrise, sunset,
the moon and stars,
doing what they have done for millennia.

Despite humanity’s worst efforts—
forests cleared, air fouled, waters polluted—
the Earth endures.

Tides still come in.
Tides still go out.

And each evening,
she fans out a breathtaking palette of color
before night falls.

How could one not feel loved
in the face of that?

Inside our houses and institutions,
the dramas run rampant.

Despite the sufficiency nature grants for free,
we steep ourselves in lack—
in what we do not possess.

We work away our days,
and sometimes our nights,
striving and grasping for things
we cannot carry beyond the grave.

We love, then we hate.
We blame others for our own lack of understanding.
Our time is too valuable to sit and listen,
to try to see from another’s viewpoint.

We hold onto beliefs as though they are lifeboats,
then exclude those who do not cling
to the same rigid forms.

And the one thing we most want from another?
To feel loved.

But love is the given—
the stardust from which we are made.

The ground beneath our feet
does not ask who we are
or what we believe;
it supports us just the same.

A tree’s branches welcome
any creature without question.

And we, above all species
on this beautiful blue orb,
possess the choice
to share what is in our hearts
or to turn away,
offering reasons for exclusion.

We bow our heads, rejected,
when all we have to do
is open—
again and again—
to love’s awareness.

Kawaihae sunset ~ bj 2017

On Self Deception

~ Bela Johnson ~ Leave a comment

We humans hold tightly to beliefs,
as if they were vital organs.
Perhaps they are.

We need to feel safe
in an increasingly unsafe world.

Fair enough.

Fundamentalist religions understand this well—
how firm boundaries,
declared holy,
can feel like shelter.

How obedience
can masquerade as peace.

Fair enough.

But something quieter—
and more dangerous—
happens
when free-thinking people
begin to believe
they are immune.

When reason
becomes the chosen refuge.

When intelligence
is tasked with protecting the heart
from what it already knows.

When logic is used
not to illuminate,
but to justify
the narrowing of our lives.

This is not stupidity.
It is often the work
of very capable minds.

We tell ourselves
we are being practical.
Realistic.
Responsible.

We say we are choosing freely,
when what we are really choosing
is familiarity.

We say we are being patient,
when we are actually postponing our place
in the shared reality we already inhabit.

We say this is temporary—
that conditions will improve,
that love will be ushered in
once the scaffolding is complete.

And because the reasons sound sensible—
even kind—
we do not notice
how much we are accommodating
what diminishes us.

Slowly,
almost imperceptibly,
separation becomes a virtue.

Endurance
becomes evidence of character.

Self-erasure—
the quiet shrinking of one’s own truth—
begins to look like maturity.

Withdrawal, mistaken for serenity, passes as peace.

At that point,
self-righteousness
need not announce itself.

It can feel gentle.
Earnest.
Concerned.

But the effect
is the same.

Justifications multiply—
for why another’s freedom
must be curtailed,
why another’s truth
is inconvenient,
why sovereignty is claimed
as a luxury
we cannot yet afford.

Safety, once mutual,
is quietly hoarded.

And we may even feel
virtuous for it.

But there is a cost.

Because when one person
is not free—
not in theory,
but in their body,
in their choices,
in their capacity
to say no—

the rest of us
are not liberated either.

We are only managing our fear
with better language.

The question, then,
is not
Who is right?
or
Who is to blame?

It is simpler.
And harder.

Where have I made a life small
so that it would feel safe?

And what truth
have I learned to live with—
as though I were its recipient,
rather than its source?

Singled out ~ bj 2017

Is That Where It Started?

~ Bela Johnson ~ 25 Comments

(Note** This is a poem about a lie spread sixty years ago, that Beatle Paul was dead. This is not, in fact, what happened. Paul McCartney is very much alive today, as of this writing in 2025.)

Paul is dead.
A most beloved Beatle.

I was in junior high school, bussed across town like so many of us then. Against our will. It was a confusing enough time for anybody—never mind a former Mormon girl who knew the church was no longer right for her, but had no idea what might replace it. My parents’ violent drama was coming to a head—if not an end just yet. Of course I had no idea what would take its place. Church, family, blast, boom, bam. Gone.

All my dreams had culminated in this void.

Then The White Album. Second-to-last track: Revolution 9.
Play it backward.
You would hear an otherworldly voice moaning, Turn me on, dead man.

In 1969, this was enough to convince Beatles fans: Paul was dead.

I failed Critical Thinking 101 then. You could hardly blame me, given my upbringing. I was just lost. Instead of considering possibilities—as I might have ten years later—I could only feel despair. The particular existential despair of teenagers.

I remembered The Beatles on Ed Sullivan, singing No Reply.

I tried to telephone, they said you were not home,
that’s a lie, ’cause I know where you’ve been,
I saw you walk in your door.

I nearly died! I nearly died!

Insert at this point, my dad singing, I wish you had! I wish you had!

How he hated his teenage daughter’s adoration of those mop tops. He had been supplanted—though I could not have known it then. A life saver for me, I now realize.

Paul? Dead?

John Hiatt’s lyric lines creep in years later, all jumbled up.

Gone, like the shape I’m in,
gone, like a fifth of gin,
gone, like a Nixon file,
gone, gone away.

Years later, after it was determined to be a hoax, I—and many Beatles lovers like me—still wondered.

And then, sixty years later, I see the similarities.

Feed them lies.
Repeat them often.
Seed them—again and again.

And the masses are left to wonder:
what is real?
What, fiction?

Pexels


Fairytale House

~ Bela Johnson ~ 2 Comments

It began as a modest house.
The kind you rent because it’s in your budget.
Brown floors. Plain rooms.
We needed shelter — and yet.

Even then,
I was already measuring
what I could hold.

I felt tenderness for the older man who owned it —
he could not afford to live there otherwise,
so our modest contribution mattered —
a deciding weight.

Somewhere between evening and morning
the house grew,
as if it had been given
a dose of Jack’s magic beans.

Rooms multiplied.
Floors appeared
where I did not even remember stairs.

Doors appeared —
some led to occupied rooms,
others went nowhere at all.

What a curious Wonderland.

People then began to arrive,
leaving their footprints everywhere.

By dawn I was holding a mop,
and the certainty
that the job was fruitless,
that it could never be done.

Surely not by me.
Not even with help.

The floors stayed dirty.
And I didn’t feel anger,
or even that I was a failure.

The task was simply
beyond me.

And that was finally
a boundary I could live with.

Saying no
to no one in particular
went against everything
I was raised to believe.

Yet it was the only answer.
The conclusion.
And it felt like a victory.

Mt. Tabor park ~ bj 2023

Autonomy

~ Bela Johnson ~ 10 Comments

The garden waits,
its pulse separate from mine—
a thousand roots threading through
their own decisions.

I have pruned too much,
watered from lack of rain,
guarded what would have
done better left alone.

Too much,
even when well intentioned,
is still too much.

Now, I watch the kale bolt,
the papaya’s thin trunks leaning
toward the light, the self-seeded
oregano flowering without
a care in the world.

Everything knows what it’s doing.
Even the dying has its place.

I bow to this unmanaged wisdom,
and, after feeling at first like I could have,
should have done more, in the end,
feel the relief of not being in charge.

Christmas cactus ~ 2025 bj

Steadier When Lived

~ Bela Johnson ~ 2 Comments

I was conditioned to hyper-attunement when young.
To notice — for how could I not — the vagaries
and inconsistencies of the humans around me.
And so I sought answers — which now seems absurd,
as if there ever were any.

Instead of realizing — a thing learned
later in life, after many experiences —
that life, by definition, requires living.
Not planned or controlled,
but stepping onto its stage,
and not without consequences.
Even when we do the best we can,
we are still wading through.
Living it.

Daunting, really, especially
in the midst of chaos.
Even if we think we know more than we do.

Fundamentalist religions attempt
to provide a container,
but it is only one container —
and a disempowering one, at that.
There are rules which, if done “right,”
insinuate themselves through repetition
and eventually land as one’s own truth.
Our inner voice.
And we learn to trust that.

In my case, that was a mistake.

I never settled, as a result
of man-made guidelines.
It took me years to discover
that the best voice of conscience was my own.
I now realize that was the voice
of intuition. My voice.
Not memorized and internalized
from another’s viewpoint.

Part of reclaiming my inner authority
was learning it was no longer
my responsibility to convey,
with missionary zeal,
what worked for me as New Truth —
a new religion, if you like.
Instead, it might empower others
to discover their own inner compass.

I had convinced myself that control
masqueraded as care,
and realized how easily
the preacher’s self-assurance
translated into something combustible
living within.

From parents to preachers,
I had no examples
of anything else to emulate.

Now. I am learning restraint — and this matters.
And because it is important to me,
I will not set myself on fire
to illuminate another’s fog,
leaving myself burned
by my own passion.

Integrity, I am discovering,
is not louder when shouted.
It is steadier
when lived.

Mahukona ~ bj 2026

Marathon

~ Bela Johnson ~ 12 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
View all responses

Because thoughts become things.
Intention is essential.
— Laureli Ivanoff

At seventy-two, my thoughts on living a very long life
are necessarily different
than they were at forty.

I have lived long enough to watch friends fall ill
and die.
Long enough to witness the suffering born not only
of disease,
but of confused priorities—
of people unaware of their own unexamined lives,
their own lack of self-reflection.

Age has not narrowed my vision.
It has widened it.
I know now, to the marrow,
how small our petty dramas truly are—
including those perpetuated by others
in the name of protection, loyalty, or fear.
Attachments tighten.
Hearts close.
And the world shrinks to whatever we believe
will keep us safe.

Recently, an elder friend died—
not gently,
but drowning in her own body fluids.
She had traveled a great distance
to be near those she loved,
only to discover that once she arrived,
the surrounding dramas took precedence
over time spent simply being with her.

Many study expansive awareness.
Few practice it.
The lotus position does not prepare us
for the moment when compassion costs us
convenience.
Do we see how we affect others?
Do we care enough to look honestly
at our own failings?
Do we ever ask
what we might one day regret?

Those who live with eyes open—
who tend their bodies and spirits,
who choose joy despite having seen
the darker edges of human nature—
we become the elders.
We face the road ahead
with either quiet excitement
or unspoken dread.
We are the ones who must live with
the consequences of choosing longevity
in a culture that increasingly
marginalizes its aging.

Each morning, I wake with optimism
about what the day might bring.
At night, I fall asleep wrapped
in the steady love of my longtime companion,
secure in the knowledge
that our needs are met—
while so many lie awake
fearing how they will endure
the years ahead.

I look forward,
but not naively.
I know that any sunrise
may carry news of loss—
another passing,
another rupture.
If these thoughts do not visit you at forty,
trust me:
they will arrive
sooner than you expect.

And so—
be kind.
Be aware.

We are a small planet
in a vast cosmos,
yet our lives matter.
Our thoughts carry weight.
Our choices ripple outward.

Love unreservedly.
See one another clearly.
So that when the end comes—
yours, or someone you love—
there will be nothing left undone,
nothing left unsaid,
and no regrets
worth carrying forward.

Tide going out, Santa Cruz ~ 2017

Thresholds

~ Bela Johnson ~ Leave a comment

From the cradle to the grave,
life presents itself in thresholds.

They arrive without announcement.
A pause in the air.
A shift in the body.
Something loosening, something tightening.

I have learned to notice how they come—
not as crises, not as summons,
but as moments that ask for orientation.
A quiet recalibration.
Feet finding ground again.

Thresholds do not vanish
when they are ignored.
They wait.

Momentum gathers regardless,
drawn by an inner compass
that cannot be reasoned with.
It moves according to attunement,
according to something beneath language.

I no longer think of this as a spiritual journey.
It feels closer to a soul one.
A life inviting itself forward.

Growth, as I’ve seen it,
rarely arrives through force.
Pressure accumulates only when there is no room left
for listening.

What is resisted does not leave.
It lingers.
It circles.

Over time, the distinction becomes clearer—
between what I believe
and what I know.

Belief lives in structures,
in inherited frameworks,
in explanations that promise certainty.
Knowing lives elsewhere—
in the bones,
in the marrow,
in the body’s unarguable response.

I have noticed how different we are in this.
How wiring, conditioning, and culture
bend us toward certain paths
and away from others.

Still, there is a shared instinct:
to pause when something subtle calls for it.
To wait until a signal makes itself known—
through sensation,
through timing,
through an almost imperceptible easing.

The road forks more often than we admit.
Choice is rarely dramatic.
It usually feels like a small turning.

I have learned that waiting is not absence.
Answers arrive in their own way,
without being forced.

Pushing tends to produce conclusions
before they are ready.
I have done this.
I have borne the cost.

When I release the pressure—
when I stop biting down—
movement resumes on its own.

Like a wave gathering,
finding its shape,
then rising,
and landing—
steady,
without strain—
on a vast, sandy shore.

Halawa Bay, Moloka’i ~ bj 1990

Deferring to the Now

~ Bela Johnson ~ 6 Comments
Daily writing prompt
Do you spend more time thinking about the future or the past? Why?
View all responses

Mindfulness is brilliant in its essence—
always here, always now.
But I would be lying
if I said I lived there
all the time.

My mind keeps me alert, attentive
to details I would otherwise miss
in the complexity of daily life.
Yet it can mislead,
moving too quickly
when important choices are required.

So when decisions arise,
I return to mindfulness
to discover clarity and space.
Still, the mind wanders—
drifting forward and back,
like fingers on a guitar’s neck:
often melodic,
sometimes dissonant.

That dissonance most often appears
when I look backward.
Memory is an unreliable witness.
My siblings’ recollections of childhood
differ from my own,
just as my children’s memories of me
will differ from mine.

To remember how we felt at five
is like stuffing a king-sized quilt
into a mailbox.
We have grown too much
to make it fit.
And so I step away
from the past
with relative ease.

The future is the opposite.
Anything is possible.
With optimism, imagination
creates worlds.
When I travel forward,
it is to envision peace—
equality among all beings,
a world like the Hawai‘i I call home,
where Aloha is practiced
and the common good
is shared.

Between past and future,
one feels expansive;
the other, fragmented,
often unsettling.
Measuring inner progress
from then to now
keeps me from slipping backward
into confusion and fog.

In the end,
I return to the Now—
the only place
where choice is possible,
and growth occurs.

Stormy horizon ~ bj 2026

The Greatest Gift

~ Bela Johnson ~ 12 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What is the greatest gift someone could give you?
View all responses

The greatest gift possible arrives by no other means
than my own inner honoring to get to the bottom,
as much as I am able, of my own inner swamp,
so that I might arrive, at long last,
in the clarity of my own inner light.

I can think of no person who could do this for me,
for if they could, I surely would have discovered them
early on.

Arriving at the heart of this quest has taken years,
for there is no shortcut. There is only awareness—
allowed, then revealed—of the source of my own suffering.

Nobody else has ever known its depths. Nobody ever could.
Each of us is mired in unfathomable layers of deception.
It is the way we move forward in life that too often asks
more of us than we are able to give.
Nobody’s fault.

Life here on Earth requires attention in too many directions
for one person to possibly attend to. And so we learn stillness—
if we honor its importance—so that we might discover calm
amidst the daily storms that assault our finer senses.

We learn about ourselves first. Then we are able to develop
a deep alliance with others of our kind, for we know the difficulty
of moving through challenge. This alliance is called compassion.

It is not something we receive because we want to.
We earn it by acknowledging not only our light,
but our deepest denials and disgraces—
emotions we would rather not feel, and so we sideline them
in the deepest vaults of our being.

But there is always a reckoning. You know this
if you have lived long enough. Then the process becomes one
of unclenching, of uncovering, of discovering the hidden miseries
that plague us all.

And then—using our cultivated hearts—we learn to love ourselves
enough into wholeness. Into peace.

Mahukona ~ bj 2026