No more unsolicited messages on my phone - but the echoes of that strange occurrence continue to reverberate.  

How much guilt does the average person carry?  Guilt we aren't good enough, that we have failed in our duty of love to others, that we haven't reached our potential, that we squander our precious lives with time wasting activities, that we continue to tread water waiting for our real lives to begin at some mysterious but never reached point in the future.  That we just aren't good enough to justify the space we take, the air we breathe the resources we use.  

"I am a beautiful person."  How much meaning in those simple words.  I am.  I exist.  I have a right to be here.  I am blessed to be here.   a.  a, one of many yet unique.  Not 'the' but a, not above, not below, not compared to but definitive nevertheless.  beautiful.  A word to swell the heart, to lift the gaze from the dregs and disasters, a word to inspire, to refresh and rejuvenate, to encompass all  that is good and true.  A beautiful day is a beautiful day, not a beautiful day but.... Beautiful stands alone, gracious and smiling.  person.  Not defined by gender or race or religion, but a uniquely complicated miracle.  A person.  The culmination of generations meeting in me.  The result of a history, the precursor of a future, this being at this point in time.  Me Now.

I am a beautiful person.  The phrase pops into my head and I say it to myself.  It is getting easier not to cringe, to doubt.  

I am a beautiful person. 

And so are we all.