I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to figure life out. Ever since I can remember, I’ve had some weird addiction to self-help books and articles. There’s been something in me that strives to figure out the “right” way to live. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to make sense of it. What to do, what not to do, how to think, how not to think, etc. Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that there isn’t one “right” way and I’m spending a lot of time standing still seeking answers instead of living. Profound, I know… it only took me 33 years to really understand this.
There is no shortcut to life. We can read and research until we are old and dying, but we will be missing out on one major component of it all… experience! In order to grow in experience, we must be able to step into the unknown, we must be willing to fall on our face, we must be willing to go through the pain, we must risk looking and feeling foolish, and we must be able to learn from all of it and embrace all of it for exactly what it is…. a gift!
All of it… the good, the bad, the happy, the sad, the mundane, the major, the ugly, the beautiful, the glory, the failure, the success, the rejection, the acceptance, the love, the hate, the journey, the wait, the mistakes, the chances we took, and those we didn’t take…. it’s all a huge gift that we’re blessed to have. We did nothing to earn it. We did nothing to give us the right to it. We are doing nothing to keep it, but it’s ours. It’s ours to make of it what we will.
We can spend time standing still and waiting… researching, seeking the answers from other’s experience or we can spend time truly living and writing our own experiences and going deeper into our own stories. We can sit stagnant and wonder who we are supposed to be or we can work on becoming daily. We can live in fear of life or we can choose to love every second of it and embrace it by being fully present, fully feeling, fully living, fully us.
We can choose to take the hard times and transform them into beautiful lessons full of meaning and wonder. We can choose to be grateful for these times because, without them, we wouldn’t be as strong, as wise, as loving, as compassionate, as accepting, as understanding, etc. In fact, I’m learning that the most difficult experience I’ve had is really what molded who I am today in such a positive and major way. When life is easy, we can celebrate it, but let’s not forget the growth that comes from the struggle and the pain.
In fact, beautiful life comes from pain… women spend months in discomfort & labor for hours while writhing in pain and we see the miracle and beauty that comes from that. I tend to think that God chose to start life this way to teach us a major lesson, we can’t forget the beautiful new life that takes place after the pain. This is something that we should carry with us in the dark moments of life when we are quivering in fear and crumbling in hopelessness. We need to remember that through the pain, there is beauty on the other side. That through the exertion of strength, there is gain. That through struggle, there is often a new and higher way of being on the other side. Pain is the journey to our own rebirth.
If pain so often brings beauty, then why do we spend so much time fearing it? Why do we sit idle while our dreams pass us by? Why do we feel sorry for ourselves while we don’t even try? Why do we replay the same scene instead of stopping to contemplate what it all means? Why are we so afraid to sit in silence and really see who we are? We spend too much time fearing life and not enough time embracing it. We live running from fear… instead of chasing it.