Five Minute Friday: Try

Kate Motaung hosts another Five Minute Friday: Try—you know how these work? Write mostly unedited for approximately 5 minutes. If you don't have your own blog, you can play in anyone's comments or in the comments on the new FMF site.

Try

by Colbie Caillat

Put your makeup on
Get your nails done, curl your hair
Run the extra mile, keep it slim
So they like you, do they like you?

Get your sexy on
Don't be shy, Girl, take it off
This is what you want, to belong
So they like you, do you like you?

You don't have to try so hard
You don't have to, give it all away
You just have to get up, get up, get up, get up
You don't have to change a single thing

Get your shopping on
At the mall, max your credit cards
You don't have to choose, buy it all
So they like you, do they like you?

Wait a second
Why should you care what they think of you?
When you're all alone, by yourself

Do you like you? Do you like you?

You don't have to try so hard
You don't have to, bend until you break
You just have to get up, get up, get up, get up
You don't have to change a single thing

Take your makeup off
Let your hair down, take a breath
Look into the mirror, at yourself
Don't you like you? 'Cause I like you

But why do you try too hard? Why do you keep trying so hard you have no life? Why do you try to live someone else's life and not your own?

By some possibly random chance – or maybe not all that random – did you buy fashion mag glossies, welcome lifestyle blogs into your heart, consume social media updates advising you to become what you never could? Would you harm the land that gave us birth, the waters that give us life? Does healing Gaia and restoring rivers not excite your passions more than the constant anxious discomfort of appearing to the outside world what you know you're not? Please don't think or strive or try—please simply be. Be simple. Be true to yourself. Be the unique person God created you to be. Claim your own dreams. Rock your own style. Don't let those hyper-critical, envious others be your mirror. Look in your own mirror. Do you like you? Don't you like yourself? You don't need to change a single thing. Feast on your own life!

love after love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott