Traffic jams, late nights at the office, the endless stream of advertisements that bombard us…our lives can be so very crazy.

Crazy sometimes just doesn’t capture it. Life can be a downright blur. From paying the utility bills to renewing your membership at the gym, from grocery shopping to cleaning out your apartment.

What to do? So much to live and so little time. How can we remember what’s really important?

Oh, she may be weary,

Young girls they do get weary

Wearing that same old shaggy dress, yeah yeah.

But when she gets weary

Try a little tenderness, yeah yeah.

Why not, as Otis Redding puts it, try a little tenderness?

Tenderness is the one thing we need.

It’s so important because even though life can be crazy, what is more frightening and demanding is that we can be crazy ourselves. Our minds can feel like they’re in a blender. Our hearts can feel like they’re on a rollercoaster. Our spirits can feel weighted.

We’re so involved in putting food on the table, trying to find a job, going through a divorce or break-up, finding a decent place to live, perhaps looking for love in all of the wrong places, going on job interviews, sending out resumes. Who thinks about tenderness, about tenderness to ourselves?

You know she’s waiting

Just anticipating

For things that she’ll never never never never possess, yeah yeah.

But while she’s there waiting without them,

Try a little tenderness,

That’s all you got to do.

We run around, speedy as ever. Or, we are so down and out we cannot move, we are paralyzed. We want to do so many things, that we overwhelm ourselves. So again, what do we do? Try a little tenderness.

Dig down deep and love from the heart.

Take a deep breath, clean the windows, and just gawk at the sky. Tell the woman or man you love that you love ‘em to pieces.

It’s not just sentimental, no no no

She has her grief and care, yeah yeah yeah

But the soft words, they are spoken so gentle, yeah

It makes it easier, easier to bear, yeah.

When I look back over my life, I certainly didn’t learn about showing tenderness to myself. Too often, loving others could be about performing, making others happy, making others comfortable, and not giving them a hard time. There was no room for me to show up for myself.

I was beaten by my mother as a child and was offered no protection because my dad was not around.

Even when I told him, he said I was making the whole story up. If you don’t think that made me think I was crazy, it certainly did. For years I thought I was the crazy one in my family.

So I say to you, show up for yourself. We all can be crazy. If you don’t send a little tenderness your own way, who’s going to do it?

Love from your deepest reserves and without reservation.

And, heck, why not throw a little romance into the mix? Life is just too short to go without a little tenderness.

You won’t regret it, no no

Some girls they don’t forget it

Love is their only happiness, yeah

But it’s all so easy.

All you gotta do is try, try a little tenderness, yeah

All you gotta do is… just try a little tenderness, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

 

Sherri Rosen is now living in Harlem, New York. She has had her own publicity business for 12 years, giving a powerful voice to people who are doing good things in the world. She writes her own blog at SherriRosen.com.

 

 

 

 

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Assistant Ed: Moira Madden/Ed: Bryonie Wise

{Photo: via Jill on Pinterest}