I find that life has a way of pushing us down when we start to fly too high. It tests us by throwing adversity our way right at the moment when we start to break out of our old habits and start to do and become more of what we envisioned for ourselves.
Perhaps this isn’t the case for everyone. Perhaps this is the version of reality that I am presented with because I grew up with parents who said “Life isn’t supposed to be easy” and “Good things never last” and “You can’t trust anyone or anything but your family”.
My personal experience of life hasn’t been that at all, but every time I break an old belief that was chiseled into me, I feel the jail guards coming to put me back in my cell. The taxman, the party pooper, the stickler, some mafia or other that demands loyalty and adherence to some standard you never agreed to.
“If you don’t like it, you can leave!” Words that make perfect sense, but sometimes there’s no where else to go. What do you tell a starving man who can’t find food when he steals the cheapest loaf of bread with the closest expiration date? There are still people who won’t let him take discarded bread from the garbage.
The world is full of all kinds of people, including the vengeful, the destructive or self destructive, the righteous and self-righteous. “I didn’t have it so easy so neither should you!” Whatever narrative they tell themselves.
But in my experience, life doesn’t present us hardship without a reason. Rather than simply trying to test us, it provides us with an opportunity to overcome our weak points, our fears, our laziness, our negativity.
If I’m that starving man and I took a piece of bread from the garbage and I’m fed for today, but the owner of the building puts up a sign saying “Don’t touch the garbage!” How do I react?
Well some might be angry, some might be scared. After all, you’ve found a means of providing for yourself in the worst of situations and someone knowingly wants to take that away from you.
“Get a job!” He says to you, unforgiving despite the hardships you’ve faced and the ones you still face.
Maybe you had a business like his that was lost due to factors beyond your control, or maybe you were betrayed. Maybe you just made some mistakes that you regret.
He doesn’t see that. He only sees you as a nuisance.
What do you do? Do you hate him? Do you blow it off? Do you try to get revenge? Do you ignore him? Do you confront him?
I would have reacted a number of different ways at different points of my life.
There were stages where I would have tried to rally all the other street dwellers and those in dire situations to raid his shop, and other stages where I would have cowered in defeat. Most recently I may have forced myself to turn the other cheek, seeing my anger as the problem.
Now I see it isn’t about him at all. It’s about how I react.
My anger was never the problem. The reason I kept finding myself in these same tricky situation was that I lost myself too easily.
When I say “myself” I mean the ideals I believe in, the deepest, purest desires in my heart, my faith in the world and in myself.
It doesn’t matter what I do, it matters what energy I put into it.
The main point never becomes to hurt him or to prove that he’s the bad guy. I don’t let fear or frustration cause me to forget who I am.
No matter what the universe throws at me, I can remain firm in who I am.
If I feel anger, there’s no reason to pretend I don’t or to suppress it. In some situations I can even express it. Maybe I’ll even go as far as making a statement….but I won’t let hate consume me.
If feelings of rage or hate or sorrow seep in, any action influence by them allows them to be completely release so that I never feel this version of them again. I don’t lean into those feelings and let them grow. I am aware of how these emotions could lead me to make a decision that will come back to bite me in the ass, or hurt an innocent bystander, or become more like whatever it is I hate about him, or prove him right in some way….and I reject any urge to do such things.
Anger can be a natural, healthy reaction, and sometimes even defiance is the most aligned path, but only if it leads to less hate in your heart, not more, and only if it leads to more faith in yourself and your life, not less.
It may lead to backlash of some sort. It may not go the way you plan. But if you are committed to grow and evolve as a result, if you become more pure of heart and if you don’t violate any sovereignty of others, that’s really all that matters.
Life throws us these tests simply as an energy saving mechanism. Why render the images of realities that aren’t going to bloom? It wants to know we are committed to a certain mode of being before it downloads all the information necessary for us to explore that part of the game.
Showing commitment to the world and self we desire is not about what we say or do, it’s about how we feel and how consistent our words and actions are with those feelings, can they coexist. If not, then life will assume that our dreams aren’t worth downloading from the server because we haven’t reach a level where we can face the new challenges and explore the new features available there.
I was originally planning on sharing some of my own personal frustration and challenges, the events that inspired such thoughts today, but a more general look at how I see this, seemed more appropriate.
I am currently pushing through my fears that I will never achieve greater levels of freedom and rather than punching the wall that is the solid outer world, I am shaping my inner world to become more free in excitement that this will cause the outer world to react.
Once been making various short music videos in order to keep creativity flowing and challenge myself every day. I’m already starting to make music that I never thought I’d be capable of, and making videos at all felt out of reach, but now I am doing it. Here are the most recent ones.
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