Peaks and valleys. This is the landscape of life... and when your on the high peaks, the air is crisp and clear and the sun shines bright, and your heart beats fast and the smiles are never ending. And then there's the decent. It's gradual and we rarely notice it until we arrive in the valley. The sun seems to disappear behind the clouds and the smiles fade, instead of beating fast the heart is heavy, and storm looms on the horizon.
In another time I would have searched desperately for a cave from which to cover from the storm... I would have hidden myself away until the skies cleared and the path back to the peak became apparent. But, as I am sitting cross legged in the valley I am bringing my experiment to the scene. I am taking the experience of the valley and holding it out in front of me as object. Is the valley really that bad? Is it as scary and lonely as I make it out to be? Okay, yes. It is scary, and it is very, very lonely. And right now I don't foresee any paths back up to the peak. So I wait and I listen. And I look around and think wow. This is painful. Really super painful. Not like end of the world nothing to live for painful. More like really wrenching and resonating pain. The pain that means something. The pain that veils the greatness waiting just around the corner. And I know this, I feel it in my bones. But the pain is so distracting. It is so tough not to just focus on it and get caught up in the vortex that it is.
I think that is maybe why growth comes after the storms in life...the storms are often what usher in the pain, and the pain is often what I get caught up in. I forget that there is always another moment coming. This one will not last forever...and I may feel pain now, but there could be bliss just beyond it. And I am not the type of girl who gives up. I asked for the pain when I opened myself up to whatever is out there in order to grow. I can't just ask for something and once I have gotten the first half of it say I want to give it back. No, I take what I am given and turn it into the greatness it could be if I could get off my pot-o-pity and work through the pain. There is no ebb is without the flow. And nothing is deserved if it has not been worked for.
It seems like so much has changed in the last year or so, which is not a bad thing, change is good I know, but it seems like such a huge shift. I wanted to be alone and figure myself out... and here I am. I have got the alone part down! It seems life has arranged things so that I will really understand solidarity... And I don't hate it...Its not my fave, but it could be worse. What I hate is the figuring myself out part. It seems that every other day I or someone close to me asks the elusive question-
"Well, what do you want?" And all I can do is stammer and stutter at the thought of answering that,
"I have no idea" is always my meager reply. I think that I am beginning to see that I do know what I want somewhere inside my mind's eye, I am just more frightened to commit it to words than anything I have ever uttered aloud.
And at the thought I shutter... it is so selfish I tell myself. And a man wiser than me says-
"I think it is time you stop trying to save everybody else and learn how to be a little more selfish..."
And the tears flow and my nose snots and I cry. Damn it. I know in my heart he is right. But doing what he says seems so easy in words and utterly impossible in action. I have heard about this lesson before...it has lurked in the shadows and corners of my mind for a while... but I have always run for shelter in the cave when that particular storm brews up. Not this time. This time we are going to spar this one out, and I will come out victorious, right past the corner of greatness. It's within my reach, I know it. All I have to do it reach out and grab it, and I will, the only reason it doesn't feel like my time is because I won't allow it to be. I have to learn to be a little selfish before I can claim my greatness. What I do know is, peak or valley, I won't be returning to the cave this time.
