I’ve thought about this for a while now.
Depth.
The world seems devoid of it.
We as a collective intentionally push it away.
Maybe it’s easier to say it’s others, or it’s us, than it is to say it’s me.
It’s as though I’m in a dream most days. Here but not. Trying to get through to the next task. I don’t worry about what doesn’t make sense or quite fit because what time and effort that would take.
And then the days float by. Moments disappear.
While I know this I behave as if it’s not true. Or at least as if it doesn’t matter, because, you know, tomorrow.
I’m exhausted. I have my traumas.
I’m not alone.
That’s one of the things I’ve come to find funny, peculiar, about being human. I see us all moving through the same experience at the bottom of it all, but I tend to think I’m the only one who could ever understand my feelings. I’m the only one with this life, relationship, happening, whatever.
In a way that’s very true. I’m the only me, after all. But how self-important, self-absorbed, at the same time.
We all have our struggles in life. To live is to struggle, to grapple with the balance of playing as a spirit in the material realm while constantly forgetting that’s the whole plot.
The struggle is what guides us closer. The struggle is the depth.
Not in some bullshit puritanical way - SUFFERING PURIFIES.
But kind of…? when we think about it. The connotation is off I’d argue but the point isn’t too far from the center of the cosmic picture we’re all painted into.
Where we struggle is where we’re exposed to what holds us back. It’s not just about divine relationship - which is my chosen main story arc - it’s also about the simple notion of enjoying life. Breathing easy. Playing well (enough) with others.
My sweet baby Freyja laughs whenever I laugh. She has no idea what the fuck we’re laughing at. And that makes it even funnier so I laugh more and then she laughs more and in moments we hit the mania of uncontrollable spastic joy for absolutely no reason.
That. Is. Life.
But I don’t believe I’m unburdened with the density of woe often enough for such sweet seconds to simply be my life. There’s always something to stress over.
I’m tired. I’m busy. I’m grieving. I’m financially struggling in this exclusionary capitalistic system that ensures my money is less and less useful so I must slave away to get more and more.
When will I not be?
Probably when I’m no longer in my body on planet earth.
So… no joy, no play, no love for me?
Maybe. Depends on what I choose, I think.
That’s the gift. That’s the work. We choose it. And we definitely do not have to. We can live a whole lifetime oblivious to anything beyond grocery shopping and coupons and work and side hustles and assuming someone’s mad at us because of how their text sounded in our heads and sweeping and mopping and getting the mail.
These things are a part of daily existence, I get it.
But it all makes an easy place to stay, to live, to set up shop, when it was only ever meant to be a bus stop on the way to something fuller, to something deeper.
That, however, is the journey we - no no no, I - am avoiding.
Because I just can’t fit in “struggle.” But really I’m already struggling and then struggling more because the struggling I’m doing is over the most superficial nothings that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of this one precious life I’m granted and the things I want out of it. So if I’m struggling why not struggle with purpose? Because god, the effort. Social media and tv shows and laundry and scooping dog poop are so easy compared to recognizing unhealthy thought patterns based on past experiences and how they’re affecting my current relationships, compared to the discipline required to commit to my daily practices, compared to the patience of maintaining an open, compassionate heart to recognize the divine in everyone rather than only in myself.
But for those of us in easier parts of the world, we must persist, in order to be able to fight to ensure all people in all places have the right to CHOOSE the depths of their own struggles.
And for those of us who want to shift the collective consciousness to something more magical, more powerful, more divine, we must persist, in order to discover the pathways that make the unseen seen, the unnatural natural, the frightening welcoming.
We gots to do the things. We need practices that serve the effort of tuning in, not tuning out. Tuning into the struggle is how we will find ease, because it illuminates the road of release. Tuning out of the struggle creates and perpetuates the energy of resistance, and it’ll take everything we have.
This is said all the time - when we are at the end of our life, which could very well be at the end of this moment, what do we want to see and feel when we remember all we can about it? What do we want to have pursued, committed to?
How much silly laughter do we want to have laughed?
We are constantly being called to the depths. It is the homeostasis of an unburdened soul.
What does it sound like? What does it say?
An answer lives inside each of us.
We gotta get while the gettin’s good. We have time to ponder, to consider, to try until we don’t, and the location of that punctuation mark on this lifetime is a mystery to us all.
So cheers to the nonsensical, whimsical absurdity of enjoying all the things we can when we dive into the river of chaotic everything, rather than walking along its banks believing there will be a bridge somewhere that keeps us out of it and out of ourselves. You’ve got this. We’ve got this. I’ve got this.
