Life in all its messy glory keeps presenting itself to me.
I keep thinking that at some point everything that’s been furiously bubbling in my life will simmer down and thicken with deep, mind-blowing meaning.
And maybe it will at some point.
And then I can write some erudite treatise on the meaning of life.
In the meantime, I have life in all its messy glory!
Contradiction.
This shows up because nothing is simply black and white, especially in divorce.
Did he love me?
Does he love me?
Will he ever love me again?
Probably, maybe, never again the same as before.
Did he despise me?
Does he hate me?
Will he ever try to be friendly?
Probably, maybe, never again the same as before.
It would be so much easier if I could clearly enunciate meaning past, present, and future.
To define without doubt the conditions enjoyed, the conditions endured.
To say this is this and that was that without a smidgen of worry as to authenticity.
But life is full of contradiction.
Our emotions are not always straightforward.
Our experiences can be full of ambivalence and ambiguity.
Time is needed to understand feelings.
Time is required to come to deeper meanings.
Confusion.
What is what?
Where is where?
Who am I?
Where am I going?
Questions come and answers appear.
Life happens.
The cycle repeats.
Questions come and answers appear.
And in each moment, I can decide to take a moment to consider: Who am I?
What do I want for myself in this moment?
Yet in some moments, the events and experiences fill me to such an extent that there is no time for reflection.
Only time for a quick breath and a step toward the next possibility, without thinking, without certain clarity.
Conformity.
The relentless pressure to behave properly.
To be within the bounds of perfection.
To do as you feel bid.
A pressure that BE-ing is beyond your control and that becoming is prescribed by powers beyond your ken.
Yet at the edge of the doubt is perhaps one truth:
I am I.
No matter what the challenge.
No matter the confusion or the contradiction, I have me.
I am I.
I get the choice of me.
For me.
About me.
Knowing that sometimes — maybe always — life is not so much about clarity, but about my ability to simply trust that I am I.
And in this trust, however tenuous it may be, is the ability and support and chutzpah I need to go on.
To take the next step.
To shift.
To release.
To simply be.
And in this moment, the mess that is my life is glorious, filled with more possibility than I can see.
And this glorious mess comes to me on the wings of joy.
Gliding over the mess, lifting me up so that I can fly into the next moment of me.
I have the choice about how I frame the story of my life.
I have the choice about whether I give up or take that road less traveled.
In the words of William Ernest Henley:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
I am I!
A lot of my writing just comes in the moment. I feel an urge rise to put pen to paper. No outline. Not much forethought. Out the words come, all on their own. For me its always an act of mindfulness. A mindful moment.
Life in All Its Messy Glory! is one of these mindful moments. Read more on mindfulness and my mindful moments.
