How do you focus on the present moment when your mind is stuck on something it can't understand?
How do you move on when the thoughts that circle your mind are ones you can't wrap your head around?
How can you accept something as reality when it feels improbable, impossible?
How do you get past something when it's so easy to spend all your time and energy regretting, wishing, or praying that you could go back, fix the mistake, and prevent it from ever happening?
How can you expect to push forward and make the most of the pieces left when you know how good it once was?
How can you even fathom a positive thought when anger and negativity are all you can muster up from your confusion and guilt?
Questions repeat. How could this happen? Why did this happen?
These thoughts remind me that the world is full of terrible realities. But it would be unfair not to remember that it is also full of innumerable overcomings of these sufferings and tragedies. And that is beautiful.
Some changes are more complex, unfair, or cruel than others, but I must challenge myself to remember that there is space for good to come from any change, no matter how difficult to accept.
Maybe I can't see it now, but eventually.
Even when it all seems dark and impossible, as if the world is covered by immovable concrete, the dirt and earth below it find a way to break and crack; nothing is permanent. This, too, shall pass. From slow and steady change, movement and growth are inevitable.
We needn't like change to acknowledge that it is occurring. We can hold space for whatever we feel while also remembering that change can bring about adaptation and resilience.
We hold the power to create meaning from these changes. However, we'd like it, for better or worse. From here, there is also space for good and bad, anger and hope, to co-exist as we navigate the changes and the new realities it brings.
While time is the only thing that can lessen the pain, change continues to work unseen. Beneath the impossibly thick layer of concrete, the earth continues to move below us, cracking and shifting, exposing light where we once only saw darkness.
Because all the while, when we could not see it, while we held both confusion and hope in our hearts, change was still at play. Like resilient seedlings, hope had taken root in the dark, cold dirt, waiting for change to continue shifting the earth, exposing cracks in what we first believed to be a stagnant, unwavering reality. And through the cracks, we can feel the sunlight again, rise to it, and bloom more beautifully than before. Different, but more beautiful and strong.
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