god only knows
An ode to the sucky parts of life.
I write this piece over the weekend of July 4th. Since May of this year, about 3 months time, I have experienced a few blows. I lost my job, then I lost basically all my savings to my taxes, then my toilet clogged and flooded my apartment. Then I got dumped on my birthday. The gut punch.
So I took a few L’s recently.
I’m not embarrassed, this could happen to anyone. But anyone who knows me knows the frequency at which I get shafted by life is pretty jarring - and I tend to get humbled multiple times at once.
And really, I don’t have a problem with it. I devoutly believe in a higher power, and a higher plan. And I believe that higher plan speaks to you in many ways, and nudges you in certain directions throughout life. It’s those Greater Reasons that help me lift my head up out of the dirt.
I’m excited about my journey, I’m excited about my potential. And I wish that kind of juice on everyone, it feels amazing to truly believe in oneself. But when you get multiple iron rods to the kneecaps at once, you definitely start to question the things around you. I questioned my whole existence after my birthday fiasco.
But I never stopped wanting it.
I obviously want ease and softness and abundance in my life, I want to be able to say yes to whatever I want in each moment. But I recognize now that if all my life was “sure, yes, no problem, do what you like”…. I might have ended up a bit of a crappy person.
To be clear, I am still crappy in my own ways, many can attest. But if there’s one thing I learn every time I’m so aggressively humbled by the universe, it’s understanding and grace.
To be even more clear, I’d like to take a moment to address how lucky I am no lives were lost and that I have access to clean water, food and shelter throughout my struggles. That’s a blessing not bestowed upon all.
Every time I get bashed in the head again by the Universe, I realize once again I’m pointing an angry finger at no one. It’s not the Universe, or God, or the Source’s fault, and it’s not them who knocked me down. It’s just other people. It happens.
And every time I lift my head up from the dirt again, I see grace. I see understanding. And they’re the ones who extend a hand. And my taking that hand is the feeling I yearn for. Grace and understanding for yourself and others is that ease and softness I look for.
So when my life is overall just the fucking worst, I think of it like the knobs on a gas stove. When you take a step back and view your life from the macro level, you turn the heat down a bit, realize things have worked out in the past and probably will again. When you hyper-fixate on shitty things that just sometimes happen, the heat gets turned up and everything feels dire and aggravated.
Join me; I’m going to turn the heat down for a while, and allow myself some time to rest after all this. Grace and Understanding follow me every day, look over my shoulder, and live in all my words.
If I should ever banish them from my Heart, the process will repeat I assume.
God only knows.