EVERYTHING AT ONCE
Emotions are not polite little entities that properly wait their turn. Sometimes they jump over one another. Sometimes they push and shove. And sometimes they pile up on top of one another like seemingly unending drifts of snow.
I think the thing that fascinates me most is how unpredictably mashed up all of life really is—
This is me at the end of a week both hard and beautiful in its unfolding.
All the emotion of it, compressed into one seemingly fragile and finite body, often seems too difficult to bear.
The truth is...we are limitless.
When did we adopt this nonsensical notion that what we go through must be one thing or another, beautiful or hard, that is? When did we become so overwhelmed and overcome by the concert of emotions we feel?
This misunderstanding of how we were created makes its way into the quiet corners of our resting minds. Here, we wrestle with the reality of being simultaneously happy and sad. And what is born of it is frustration in heaping measure. Too often we replay our hours and imagine how our responses could have been better, or different, or more.
Two years ago this past week, in the midst of this already overwhelming season, I started losing my long, blonde hair. In some ways I felt liberated. In some ways I felt apprehensive, even scared.
Sometimes the hardest thing in the moment is teasing out exactly what we feel…and then to feel it in ways that transform and edify.
Yesterday my new friend from cancer clinic told me she’s resorted to rolling down her window in traffic and tossing out handfuls of her loosening strands. We laughed until we were weeping, and then something that felt a little like the start of healing came.
Laughing. And weeping.
It seems we were designed this way. That is, to feel many things all at once. We evolve when we uncover exactly what is being felt and why. We heal when we agree to look deeper, when we refuse to Simplify.
When our thoughts and emotions are aligned,
When peace is made with what is felt,
the conflict within is quieted,
and we find our way through and out.
Hard and beautiful. The rough edges and smooth lines, together, inhabiting the mesmerizing interiors within.
This recognition is more than making peace. It is making something exquisite of what is.
NOTES:Looking at my calendar I was in awe to discover that this week, on the same day I began losing my hair two years ago, I managed to drive my Jeep into a bank of snow.Those who have lived in freezing temperatures will admonish that an illegal U-turn in icy conditions is never a good idea. But I, with my four wheel drive, thought that I was perfectly equipped.Isn’t it interesting that no matter how prepared we think we are for any given situation, sometimes we end up getting stuck?The secret, it seems, is to find a new way out—to explore the options that may be foreign, even scary,to test what is believed and what we tell ourselves,until the initial reaction subsides and our wheels stop spinning,until we see what is behind and in front of us in entirely new ways.