TO FEEL by Murray Hidary

What else are we made for 
but to feel? 

We were not made
to solve life
like a problem set before us, 
but to walk it barefoot 
the ground rising 
to meet each step. 

To feel is to enter the river
without asking where it ends—
to trust the current
more than the map,
to let the water hold your weight
and call that surrender. 

To feel
is enough—
wind on skin
grief without story
nothing to fix
nothing to name
only this pulse
saying yes.

Let the tide curl around your feet
as if to say, you belong.

To feel
the pulse of the world
through every small courage,
every trembling tenderness. 

To feel
the wind’s brief sermon
against your face, 
the rain’s soft confession 
on your open palm. 

To place your hands
on the rough bark of loss
and still call it beautiful.

The grief that arrives slowly, 
the grief that comes suddenly. 

To sit with pain long enough
to feel past its discomfort,
not tempted by the story
it tries to tell.

To follow it—fully,
without turning away.

To rest inside the ache itself,
in its contraction, its density,
Until it widens,
expands,
softens, 
becoming something
so subtle;
pure presence.

To be porous to the world,
a flute the wind insists
on playing through you. 

The ache of leaving,
the joy of return. 

The astonishment of the heart
still beating
after all it has carried.

And somewhere,
beyond the noise of meaning,
beyond even hope,
you realize:

Perhaps this is all
the world ever asked of us—
to feel it,
to feel it all, 
and to keep walking
through the light
that keeps changing.