Questions for this advice column were provided by Kickstarter Backers who selected the Ask A Unicorn reward during our 2021 Kickstarter campaign.

 

How did you know you were a Unicorn?

First I was myself, and myself only, wild and alone. The wind was in my nostrils and mud on my hide. Then the human world, with its love for chains, boxes, cages, and walls, caught and wrought me: this is what we say you are. Here is how we see you.

How do I keep my heart full of love, rainbows, sparkles, and glitter towards people whose actions seem to be founded in ignorance and hate, who through their choices put other delightful humans in peril and danger?

A heart full of rainbows, sparkles, and glitter does not sound like a human heart doing its best to drive blood through the rivers and rivulets of one’s body. It sounds like a glass jar of trinkets: appealing and lifeless.

What if your heart didn’t have to be pretty, pleasant, and marketable? What if storms could scour it, and wildfires, and a cleansing rain?

Go deep, dig like a badger, until you find the vast mystery within you. Learn the wildness of the world and of your own heart, and know too that there has always been evil in the world. Let your heart fill with rage, grief, sorrow, brokenness, and surrender, each in its turn, until everything flows out, and peace remains.

Then when you meet evil and foolishness in your daily walk, you will know whether to speak, fight, love, or run. Move wisely to counter evil, and you will have achieved more than princes and emperors.

Your heart will roar.

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