Just for Today

How are people not able to understand that every moment in time you are changing?  How is it that you are expected to maintain the same equilibrium whatever happens in your life?The reason we are born into this world is to learn our lessons, right? Then when you are in the process do you do so in a state of Buddhahood? Or are you allowed to respond, react, grieve, be angry, vent your feelings, allow to experience sadness and joy and then come back to the state of being normal? 

Every loss is a loss, however you term it. You lose a person dear to you, and the dynamics of family living changes... You take a breather, and you are faced with an illness which again brings a series of upheavals in your life. You are barely coping when you find yourself jobless, without any warning.  Still you are moving, grinning, living and not complaining.   You are breathless, coping with the depression of a family member, the bringing up of a teenager, struggling to make ends meet financially. Then you have the blow of a family member committing suicide and the rest of the so called family deciding you do not deserve to belong. You still grin... And you still do not lose faith in life. There is hurt... Lots of it, but you still choose to remain happy.

 

And then, just when you think you have turned the corner, there is a boulder waiting to strike you. And it hits you... Wham! On the face. Just like that. And you feel yourself floating in the fluid of senseless sorrow, clinging on to the one straw that is nearest to you. The only one left in the world to call your own. You still face it. You continue to get up, dust off the grief and pull on. Except for the heavy feeling of numbness, brought on by the absence of the one person who stood by you through it all, and except for the fact that the people you most counted on in your life suddenly fell off the precipice of your life without any warning, without any reason, life was fine. 

The recovery from blows takes time.... And some wounds never heal... You carry them in your aura, and into your psyche.  Even a stone simply lying on the river bed changes its form because of the continuous water flow on its surface. Then is it fair to expect that so many blizzards would leave a person unscarred, unchanged?

Is it masochistic to sit and take stock of all that one goes through? Or is it okay to reflect on your past and reassure yourself on how much you have handled, and it is okay to get angry if someone turns around and tells you that you are not allowing yourself to  heal? Is it okay to not explain how much you have actually fought not to become bitter and cynical, how much you have learnt to smile in the face of adversity? Is it okay to tell the person, that if I had not let go, if I was holding on to bitterness, I would not have had the courage to develop new friendships, to hope and to dream again? Why, I would not have had a relationship with the very same person, who was today sitting and telling me I was not handling life the way I should! Why is it that every time there is self referencing happening when you are given advice on how to handle life situations? Thy sorrow is greater than mine?

Every blow that I have faced has only made me more resilient.  And yes, it has brought about a change in me that I know many may not like.  Maybe I have to take another birth to learn the lessons I have not learnt so far.  But I read somewhere that the most sorrowful events hone the feelings to fine nuances that cannot be put in words. 

 

And today, when I experienced the finality of yet another loss: of a dream, which actually barely saw the light on of the day,  very frankly, all I felt was a sense of relief. Relief that I don't have to pretend, don't have to give explanations for my thoughts and feelings, which are all my own.  It was me, pure and simple, and I don't have to be any which way that I am expected to be. Now I know how Henry David Thoreau felt when he was able to be himself in his log cabin.