When the Sky Transforms

There is something magical about the early hours of morning when the sky shifts from darkness to light. After seemingly endless hours of darkness, the sun awakes from it's slumber and begins to creep up over the horizon, bringing light, warmth and life to the world and forcing darkness into hiding. During this brief moment in time, the sky is a beautiful explosion of color. Red, pink, and orange stain the sky as a gift for enduring the cold, dark hours of the night and offer a sign of hope for the sun lit hours to come. Everything begins to change after that moment; the stillness of the air begins to stir, birds begin to chirp, the frost begins to thaw and plump beads of dew begin to drip slowly off of the foilage and plop onto the soil. An instant ago the world was a lifeless and confusing place, now life and beauty have been restored to the world.

The sky shifts again in the evening. As the sun sinks behind the horizon, it says farwell by painting the canvas of the sky with deep shades of purple, orange and blue, leaving beams of light shining out through the clouds as a reminder of all the good moments that occurred during the day. Life begins to slow down and a chill in the air develops and tickles any exposed skin as the last traces of sun beams slowly retreat into darkness. In that instant, there is a feeling of peace and contentment for the day that has just drawn to a close.

Life is cyclical. Every period of darkness is followed by a period of light in the same way that periods of light will always be replaced by periods of darkness. For those who understand the cycle, life is filled with just the right mixture of light and darkness to prod us towards taking the path of self discovery. In darkness there is no light to guide us, so we are forced to look internally to highten our other senses and limit blindless scrambling. When the light returns, a new perspective on life and ourselves and a desire to soke in all the warmth and beauty of the day lit hours will have developed. Although both darkness and light are important to self discovery, the most beautiful moments in life are when the sky transforms. These moments are easily missed if time isn't taken to see them, but it is so important to take the time to embrace these wow moments. Those sudden, short lived bursts of color make life so much sweeter.

Leave

“No, life cannot be understood flat on a page. It has to be lived; a person has to get out of his head, has to fall in love, has to memorize poems, has to jump off bridges into rivers, has to stand in an empty desert and whisper sonnets under his breath... We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?" -Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts

Everyone has to leave the place they grew up. The place that was home for so long can only provide the nutrients to support so much growth before the resources are used up, growth stops, and the spirit dries up. For some people that day comes quicker than for others, but in the end, everyone has to leave to develop themself.

Leaving is a rebirthing process. It's a chance to break free from the image people have created and to create themselves. Each new experience creates the individual and staying in the same location limits the amount of experiences a person can have, therefore limiting the development and depth an individual can attain. The repetetivness of having the same experiences over and over again dulls the sences. Changing the scenery forces life to be experienced in a whole new way, sharpening the feelings of joy or beauty experienced.

Staying in the same place provides a one sided perspective of the world. There is only so much of the world that is visible from home. To get an expanded picture, leaving has to occur. Leaving home turns ideas of the outside world into reality by revealing how things really are rather than how they are imagined to be. False perceptions of the world are then shattered and replaced with real knowledge.

Roots will always be in the place that a person grew up, and home will always be there to come back to, but to grow, change, and shine out, new places have to be discovered. The hardest part is making that first move of getting up and going. There are so many options and sometimes it can be overwhelming trying to pick which path to take. The thing to remember is that taking an unintended path will always take the follower to the place that they intended to be. In some weird and unexpected way, things will always work out, it's just a matter of taking that first step and leaving.

Tripping and Not Falling

Tripping is an inevitable part of life. We all do it no matter how careful we're watching our step. A few months ago, I was chasing after a grandiose dream. The dream was ahead of me on a path that was long and full of obstacles, but I was focused, watching each step carefully, and I was able to hurdle over each obstacle that crossed my path. I was slowly but surely getting closer to the dream, but out of no where an obstacle came that was too big for me to hurdle over. I tripped over it and fell hard face first. I layed on the ground in shock for a while and when I finally shook off the fall, the dream was so far ahead of me I couldn't see it anymore. I tried get up and keep running after it, but I was like a deer in the headlights just standing there with no idea which direction to go and no idea where I was. It was devistating, because all I thought I had was catching this dream. Finally after a couple of weeks of feeling blind and panicked, I recovered, regained composure and got back on track. It wasn't the path I was originally on, but it was a temporary path that would keep me occupied until I found the dream again or another one came in sight. What I learned from the experience was that we have to train our reflexes to act quickly so that when we trip, we just stumble and catch ourselves before we fall, that way we can keep going, even if it's in a different direction than where we were going before. Quickening our reflexes will save us from a full on fall, which will limit the time spent in the panicked state. There will always be unexpected challenges and obstacles in life that we will have to face, but it is our reaction to the situation that will change the outcome. We can trip, fall on our face, and spend time motionless in the panicked state or we can train our reflexes to react quickly. This will transform a full on fall into a stumble that we can recover from quickly and keep going. Just because we trip doesn't mean that we have to fall.

2012, The Year of Transitions

At the beginning of last year, I wrote in my journal that 2011 was going to be the year of exploration; exploration of self, exploration of love, exploration of foreign places, exploration of my limits and exploration of life. As it turns out, I was right in my prediction and 2011 was the year of exploration. I connected with myself and finally liked the person that was there, I was in a good relationship for most of the year, I went to Alaska and Hawaii, I pushed my comfort zone on many different occasions, and I found yoga and became completely immersed in the practice and philosophy as a way to better my life to understand life. After reflecting on the accuracy of this prediction, I wondered what 2012 should be termed as. I thought maybe movement, change or self discovery, but none of those seemed quite right. Then, it hit me. Transitions. 2012 is going to be the year of transitions; transitioning from my home town to new places, transitioning jobs to figure out where I want to be, transitioning away from the college life, and transitioning from plans to taking things as they come. Transitions are sometimes hard. They don't feel important. They feel like they're just a stepping stone to the next monumental segment of life and nothing can be gained from them. In actuality, even though transitions feel insignificant, they are some of the most important times in life. They are the times when we can reflect on the past and set up for the future. Transitions also connect our life's events to create a continuous sequence. Without them, life would be random events with no correlation to each other. It's easy to forget that every event builds upon what we have gained in previous events to create our lives, so it's important to be present in all the parts of it and not just the events we see as "monumental" to live a full life and gain everything that we can from it. Going into this year of transitions, I can expect that it will be difficult, but I don't want it to be a year wasted. I want to learn all that I can from every event, no matter how insignificant it seems at the time and fully embrace everything that is thrown in front of me. Life is too short to write off the transitions.

The daughter you see isn't the daughter in existence

Rumi said, “Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.” When it's a parent that's tearing you down, ignoring them can be a hard thing to do. Until a few years ago my dad and I were very close. We talked every other day and we saw each other very frequently, but somewhere in my growing up process during college, we lost that. Our lives are supposed to be fluid like water. We move, swell, expand, churn, and change with each bend, rapid and waterfall. Somewhere in his life, he just stopped moving. He became a rock glued into the muddy bank of the river. Everyone else kept flowing past him, but he refused to move. His little girl grew up, but he couldn't acknowledge that because it would involve shifting from the comfort of his mud cavity in the riverbank. When he looks at me, the daughter he sees isn't the daughter that is in existence. He creates his own image of a person that he can love or be angry at because it is easier than accepting the fluidity of the water around him. He likes to think that his daughter is a quiet little girl; a recluse that will never marry, have friends, or do anything wrong; someone overweight; and as a brainiac, so anytime I try to talk about what is happening in my life, he ignore me. His image of me is comfortable and he can see his own reflection in it, so he won't listen to anything that will force him to abandon this image of me. He wants me to be him so that he won't feel like the only one that is stuck. I can't be around him anymore because after I see him he tears me down so much I feel miserable about myself and start to believe that his image of me is truth. For a long time, I would take the feelings of disease and death when I was around him because he is my dad and family is the most important thing to me, but it has gotten to the point that he wrecks so much havoc on my emotional health that until he choses to see the person that I have become, I am going to have to limit contact with him. I thought that by sticking out the emotional abuse I could pull him out of his rut and get him moving with flow of things again, but he has buried himself so deep in his hole that he won't budge. He has to make the choice to rejoin the flow of water and until he does, he will not keep me there in his hole. I chose the exuberance of life that comes with fluidity over the fear, sadness, death, and disease that comes with stagnance.

Lost is a State of Mind

During the past couple of months I have discovered how much your state of mind reflects the state of your life. I feel like I am traveling in a boat through life's ocean and my mind controls the conditions. When I don't think about where I "should" be or where other people expect me to be, I know my boat is heading in the right direction and I am exactly where I need to be at that moment in time. The second I start to question my decisions about the route I've taken, which primarily occurs after looking at where my peers are or when I think about people's expectations of my voyage, thick fog and tall, powerful waves roll in. The waves toss my boat in every direction and I lose control. The fog limits my visibility, causing navigating to be difficult and I get overwhelmed deciding which direction I should go to get out of the fog. There are so many options and I don't know exactly where I want to end up. The further I think into the future, the more fog rolls in, blanketing me with anxiety. I convince myself that I am lost, so it becomes my reality. When I do stop thinking so much about the future and start enjoying where I am right now, the fog clears and I realize that I'm not actually lost. It was all in my mind. You can't be physically lost because all life is made of is a bunch of experiences. Every experience is beneficial and creates your ocean. Life may take you on a completely different path than what you had originally intended, but you will end up where you need to be. Our journeys are all different, but in the end the ocean brings us to the same place. It is our choice whether we navigate through the fog and waves or through calm water with the sun smiling down upon us.

Planting a Seed and Successfully Growing a Tree

A year and a half ago I planted an acorn. I watered it, nurtured it, and sent it all of my positive energy to it in hopes that it would grow into a beautiful, strong and courageous oak tree. I waited patiently, knowing that the life inside a seed takes time and the right conditions to be awakened, but too much time had gone by without any sign of the acorn ever opening it's eyes to the light of the world. It got to the point where I gave up on my little acorn. I thought I had picked a dud acorn that would never sprout life, so I started looking for a new seed to plant. Months had gone by since I had given up hope on a tree ever growing when an unexpected green sprout started to emerge from the soil. I was so excited when I saw the growth I could hardly contain myself, but I didn't tell many people because it was too early to tell if this sprout was a tree or just a weed. If it was my tree, the timing was perfect. I had just lost my companion and my current scenery was getting to be overly explored. I was ready to dedicate all of my time and energy into this tree and explore all of it's branches. After a week went by, the sprout had grown enough to tell that the growth was indeed a tree. My initial reaction was surprising. I immediately burst into tears, and not tears of joy. They were tears of disappointment. I had been waiting for this moment for a year and a half and it was finally here, so why was I disappointed? I mean what did I expect? An instant full grown tree? It made me question my intention for planting the acorn in the first place. I felt selfish for not wanting to give this tree a chance and I couldn't provide a clear answer of why I didn't want to help this tree grow and reach it's full potential. I wasn't scared of it or unsure if I would be able to make it grow, it just didn't feel right, so I started observing this tree more closely; smelling it, touching it, tasting it, meditating next to it. I was spending so much time with this tree trying to figure out what I was going to do, and I was starting to get sick. While meditating and taking in all of the information I was getting from my observations, it occurred to me that this wasn't my tree. This wasn't the oak I planted, but a juniper which had somehow managed to kill my acorn to make room for itself. Yes, it was a tree, but not my tree, and on top of it all, I'm allergic to junipers. So I was then faced with a choice; do I dedicate 27 months of my life to this tree which needs my help, knowing that those will be the hardest 27 months of my life, but in the end coming out a stronger person or do I plant another seed and wait for my oak tree, the tree that I'm really passionate about? Deep down I knew what my decision would be, but people were playing a huge roll in my decision making process. They thought I was crazy for not wanting to jump at the opportunity to help this tree grow because I should take my chance on this tree while I know there is something growing there. Junipers have branches to explore too, they told me. They didn't understand why I would abandon this tree just because it was making me feel sick. In the end, it is my life and my decision. I don't have a good feeling about this juniper and this isn't a tree that I'm passionate about, so when it comes to helping this tree, I won't be putting all of my energy into making it grow healthy and strong. I would rather plant another acorn and wait for a tree that will I love and want to help, not because I feel obligated to. It will be just as much work and just as hard to get it to grow and flourish, but facing the hardships knowing that the end product will be the beautiful oak I wanted in the first place will make it worth it. In the end, there is someone out there who is really passionate about that juniper and will dedicate themselves to helping that tree reach it's full potential.