The heartbreak over the impermanence of life only exists with the moments we don’t want to lose. The ones that make us want to press pause and linger in like a long, summer afternoon. How is it that those moments seem so few and far between and the difficult and mundane can seem so common? Is it as simple as a perspective shift? An attitude adjustment? Why do we wish away Mondays and set our sights on the weekend?
In some cases, it can be as simple as attitude adjustment. But, I think it is more apt that there is a lack of acceptance. It’d be nice to fill our days with things that don’t make us want to race toward the weekend, and sometimes we can make changes to work toward that. But, what happens when things fill our days that we did not plan on?
When we’re dealt a hand we didn’t envision, it can be devastating. Instead of accepting the present and focusing on how we can make current circumstances work, we all-too-often dwell in the past. We get stuck in the scenarios we had imagined in our minds and then disappointed that reality does not match up.
The inspirational gurus preach that only you have the power to make changes in your life to be happy. But they don’t seem to step into the waters that are beyond our control—the circumstances we can’t change. No one envisions a future filled with diagnoses, corporate buy-outs, unexpected loss of loved ones, global pandemics—all the things we cannot change and do not have control over.
The world is a chaotic place and people are unpredictable.
But, from chaos comes beauty. Storms overturn and unveil hidden treasure. Adversity sharpens the stone. The everyday provides time for growth, space to learn grace. There are times when we can’t change the circumstances–whether it be another Monday during a global pandemic or an unexpected major life event. And those times are also opportunities where we can choose to be disappointed that things are not going as planned, or accept what they are and set our course once again.
Here’s to the present and what may arise from it. Here’s to sitting in the mundane moments and recognizing the beauty within them too. Here’s to rolling with the punches of the unexpected and rising once again. Here’s to casting away expectations from past lives and embracing the life right in front of us.
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