Photo by Vlada Karpovich on Pexel
The vagaries of life flow along capricious meandering channels. You have no say as it propels you through tortuous windings, its murmurous depths, and crystalline shallows. Like the unpredictable summer storm, it jolts you and drives you mercilessly forward. Though it’s advisable to keep your options open for as long as you can, you seldom give up trying to force control over life, hoping and wishing for different outcomes.
Everything moves at its own pace, with little or no regard for how anxious or impatient you might become. While you may believe you’re safely tucked under the fuzzy blanket, life suddenly crashes upon you like a giant wave on the shoreline, overturning all that you hold dear into oblivion. Completely unpredictable and highly unstable, it takes what it wants and spits the remainder.
Everything that must happen will happen. You can’t anticipate every possible scenario. People come and go; some stay while others leave. Some enter your life, transform your entire world, and become strangers overnight. What you thought was your safe place suddenly turned into a space of death and silence.
You spend nights finding your way out of the shadows. The sounds of your past swivel through a hollow tunnel. Sadness wail and brokenness lament. Sure, it’s your right to grieve, wet the earth’s dust with tears, and deny reality as it stares in your face. You can never fully know the how, when, and where of everything. When life hits, it hits hard. You’re left staring at the embers flickering close to darkness in the abyss of hopelessness.
You feel like you’ve lost the capacity to go on. Your arms are tired from constantly reaching out that you let them dangle at your side. The motion in your head wears you out. There’s no hope. There’s no point.
While you attempt to find yourself amid the confusion, remember now that you have a heart, and it knows. It’s a powerful organ that’s capable of renewing itself over and over again. At the lowest moments, it picks itself up. Amid roller coaster rides, it adapts to change. It keeps you alive when you lose the will to pull yourself together.
You will probably never forget what happened, but you will get better. Healing will take place. Although it seems impossible, suddenly one whole minute goes by without pain. Then an hour and longer. Before you know it, you’ve made it through another day and then another.
The impermanence of all things awakens the heart. You learn to make peace with life as you ripple across the vast ocean. Sometimes you chase the waves but lose your way. At other times you arrive at the port and realize you can’t stay because the journey doesn’t stop. As you float along, you unexpectedly discover majestic sunsets.
That’s what matters. Life bends and breaks you. It tries to suck up the last flicker of light left in you, turning you into another person. Regardless of how you feel, hold on because you do have what it takes to bounce back. When you finally gain the strength to do so, you’ll learn that you can shine regardless of how dark it gets. You find out despite your broken wings, you will fly again.
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| HIGHLIGHTS |
It’s wonderful working towards a goal, but I need to develop the right mindset. It’s possible to find satisfaction where I am and not hold my happiness off to a future moment. I have not arrived because there isn’t a final destination. Life is a constant, fluid process of becoming.
Some of us are secret hoarders lugging our entire lives in our bags—one half-filled with what was, the other with what is, and what should be.
| FROM THE ARCHIVES |
Everyone is responsible for themselves. I need to hold myself accountable for how I behave and how I respond because it reflects who I am. It does not help for me to say that I behave poorly because someone made me.
Roadblocks are not the journey. They are spots we pass through on our way to the destination. It has nothing to do with where we’re going.
I try not to stress out if I don’t produce much work today, or even tomorrow. I realize the earth does not go off its axis if I decide to take a chill pill. My self-worth does not depend on how much I do or don’t do. Sometimes it’s okay to just exist.
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Have a Purposeful Life Now!
I realised very late in life that healing started taking place the day it started hurting like hell. Even depressive thoughts were giving rise to closeness to God and that’s where the healing started. But, I was too engrossed in pain that I didn’t give much credit to the healing. Now when I look back I can say God was watching my back and he still does. How fortunate I feel about this because I was relying on humans while God proved to me many times why he should be my real patron. Your articles evoke a healer in me. I see that healer in you because I know even though we have never met we have been through a lot.