We all know that Change
is part of Life (or do we?). Saying it sounds like the ultimate trite cliché.
Living it, however, can often be a roller coaster affair. I happen to think
of ‘clichés’ as Inherent Truths that are most often ignored…
Oh, there are many of the ‘usual’ changes we can rhyme
off (which is not to say that they are Ordinary!), such as birth, aging,
death, and in between perhaps, marriage, illnesses, relocation, job loss,
or divorce. But labeling this short list (by no means complete) does not
make any of them cut n’ dried, for truly, none of these are small transitions,
yet… nor are they in fact usually sudden. They’re all chapters within the
ever-revealing story of our lives, while each person encounters them from
within themselves. And whether we’ve rested in ‘Oblivion’, or whether we
assume we’re ‘prepared’, they can and often do hit us standing sideways
as their full reality inevitably unfolds. And, no, it never stops… that’s
part of the trip…
Maybe, maybe the thing we’re so frightened of, that is
most disconcerting, is not necessarily change itself - but that it will
change us. Yet that is inevitable… Sadly, our culture negates and shuns
the notion, the reality, that we are but standing within The Circle, as
we drift further and further away from our connection to the ceaseless
cycles of this living Earth. And so here is another Inherent Truth: our
culture is utterly notorious for denying Death. We hate, fear, ignore The
Big One, and so we often despise the ‘little’ ones in between that but
serve as reminders that nothing stands still, that endings and beginnings
are intimately intertwined.
Yet all of these can become milestones when we’ve learned
to live with them, embraced their value in hindsight, grown with them,
or ‘transcended them’ having made peace, or if in no way better said, rolled
with the punches… Yet many of us often can’t seem to move on without an
almighty grudge - feeling belittled by Life itself. Ah, but we are little!
However, we’re not being mocked. Ironically, it is not this living that
shatters our beings… but the illusions we cling to. In the wise words of
Stephan Levine, “The acknowledgement of impermanence holds within it the
key to life itself.”
~The tragedy of life
is what dies inside a man while he lives - Albert Einstein
How I feel between
here and there,
away from an older life now gone elsewhere
is lost in the muddle and fear and surprise,
as I look in the mirror into stranger’s eyes.
Yet fighting through currents, in silence or song,
I seek the ones that will guide me along.
For the waves are my hopes;
The ocean is me ~
And though the floods overwhelm me
navigating this sea,
I pray when this journey comes to an end
that I’ll have been brave as I followed my course ~
And that I wish surely to have earned my own trust,
and sought secret stars without remorse…
~ Gabrielle
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