Reflecting on Chaos
Sometimes, I feel like we forget to be grateful for the chaos in our lives. My reflection of existence appears to be a collection of delicate moments that represent a chaotic narrative that define who we are, who we want to become and the pain we choose to hold onto. Reflecting on my pain has been a journey that I don’t always venture into with grace – many times, my pain is an issue that I fervently and honestly stay far away from.
But there is nothing like the recognition of strength when you have realized how much you’ve grown from your experiences painful or not.
Laying in bed tonight, I couldn’t help but wrestle with thoughts from my past. As I turned towards the internet to help soothe my anxiety, I opened Tumblr and there was a post about increasing positive thoughts.
Tumblr told me to envision the people that I loved the most and to send them a white ball of shining light. As I laid on my back in the silent darkness, I could feel not the people that I love and that I think of countlessly cross my mind. Instead, it was the ones that I shove into the darkest corners of my psyche and cast away with hate & judgment.
As each individuals face – who without my choice and with my choice has exited my life for some purpose – surfaced I could feel myself sending them love and hope and forgiveness. It felt good to sit with them again and to see only the beauty in who they are and where they come from. I would slowly hug them and tell them over and over again how much I truly loved them.
However, as I began to send them love, the pain of our relationship reemerged like a sunken ship full of forgotten jewelry. I couldn’t help but feel those old, memorable feelings of resentment, hate, and even envy. But as I regained consciousness and recentered my mind, I let tears fall from my eyes.
I then looked towards God and I was filled with immense gratitude.
Pain is an Act of Grace
It is incredible to me that we get to live each day over. That every day is a new adventure that comes and goes and there is so much to living that is happening all at once. It is this realization that makes me confident that all things happen for some greater good whether it be apart of my destiny or not.
That twists and turns and downfalls are an essential part of finding yourself and loving the moments that matter.
It is a wonderful feeling knowing that I am going to rest my head tonight, and nothing is going to remain the same tomorrow.
Isn’t that incredible?
During my meditation, I realized that those experiences bad or good shaped me as a person. They helped me figure out what I wanted to tolerate, the kindness I wanted to give myself and the experiences I wanted to form on my own. They helped me understand people on a deeper level and they helped gain a larger universal empathy for everyone who falls and makes mistakes and then gets back up again.
We’re so fortunate to live such unique lives full of variability and causality.
I am grateful for the chaos and the relativity. It is what makes living so magical. The universe gives us things that we think we want and when we have them we either let our ego self-destruct or we cherish those moments and softly, sweetly and sadly let them go. This is why butterflies are my favorite animal. They really represent this concept. They evolve, change and migrate to different parts of the world. They adapt to their surroundings and they fly effortlessly without remorse. They aren’t static and the variability in their species represents a sort of universal metaphor for the complexity of reality. They’re ever-changing – and I know that regardless of my past, my present has been shaped by my experiences but they do not define me. In fact, they have allowed me to grow.
Tomorrow is a brand new day and the next will be full of new surprises and experiences that are unlike the ones we’ve ever experienced, creating new neuropathways and memory networks that connect our total narrative to a collective understanding of who we are.
