Soul Itching

Have you forgotten to take care of yourself today?

And I don’t mean did you forget to eat or bathe, and in doing so neglected your physical needs. I mean to ask, have you nourished yourself today? Have you given yourself what you really need?

Let me explain further. Let’s say for the sake of an argument, that we all have souls. (Listen, it doesn’t matter where those souls go after we die, that’s an entirely different argument.) And if you don’t like that, let’s just say that there is a part of ourselves that is uniquely…us. No other human being has the same nutty, nougat center as you do. And so it is has unique needs.

But we wear our souls down in the course of the day, like a pencil eraser. And somewhere along the way, we need to refuel. Me? I need to dance in front of a mirror while lip syncing my favorite songs to feel like I’m whole again. I need to drink a glass of wine and take a shower (sometimes simultaneously.) I need to speak to an old friend for hours at a time. I need to write.

I call this “soul itching.” It’s like scratching a part of myself that I can rarely reach, and it feels just as good. Think of it like a huge bear vigorously rubbing its back against a tree. Except on your soul.

And it’s really important to make time for soul itching. Because what happens when you don’t allow yourself that time to do what you like/need to do, you just get itchy. And when that happens, you make a lot of bad decisions and you get a little snippy.

So, don’t let yourself suffer. Scratch off a little at a time, steal little moments every day. You won’t know how it good it feels (and how much you needed it) until you do it.