Wild fires. Scorching heat, suffocating smoke.
The slow unspooling of the pandemic, with its high mortality rate, long-term physical damage, wide-spread economic and educational ramifications. Racial and class inequities coming to the fore; marchers in the street. An ever-widening political chasm encouraged by our highest leaders.
How in the world is any individual supposed to deal with this??
My mind does what minds do: insists that THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING. If only…
..we had a different government
..we’d prepared for Covid
…we hadn’t kept enslaved people
…we didn’t use so much plastic, or we’d planned for climate change, or, well, if only life was fair and made sense, well, then this wouldn’t be happening.
Katie Hendricks said that a great way to make ourselves crazy is to argue with reality. Because reality always wins.
What’s the alternative?
Acceptance, for sure. Facing what is, letting it all be true. Even loving and appreciating life as it is showing up for us, right now, this moment, in its order and beauty and its seeming chaos and incomprehensibility.
There’s more, though. I love a good story, and here’s one I want to tell you:
THIS IS WHAT WE’RE HERE FOR.
We’ve come across time and space to be here right now, to step into this particular reality, full as it is of cataclysmic change and wildness. We’ve come to hold the light in the face of darkness, to speak truth and live from grace, to shift the paradigm to away from struggle and strife to one where every single one of us can thrive. To find our real power, in connection, and love, and collaboration. To move out of Reactive Brain as many times as it takes to find the serene shores of Creative Brain, where there’s always a new possibility we couldn’t see, let alone consider.
As attached as humans might be to predictability and how we each would prefer life to show up, it’s time for us to get agile.
To be like paddlers on a churning river, letting the flow of life pull us forward as we do our best to steer through the rapids, avoid crashing into the rocks, and finally shoot out into the waiting calm water. Because the exhilaration of the ride–and the contrast of deep rest–is the whole point of a big life.
You’ve read these words from me before:
Ships are safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.*
*Paraphrase of quote by John Augustus Shedd