Last week was “a week”, let’s just say. One of those weeks where your brain decides that 4am is a good time to wake up. Or, at least, not allow you to go back to sleep. Who’s got time for sleep when there’s just so much to over-analyze and think about, right?
On one of those early mornings, once it’d become apparent that there was no chance of returning the peace of slumber, I decided to be in the peace of the prevailing hour. The time when most of the city was still sleeping. No cars, no school buses, no next door neighbour dog barking to be let back inside. Just the silence of the night, soon to make way to the hustle of the day.
I had no choice in the matter as to what was occupying my mind that morning, so I chose to let it have the space. I sat down in front of the keyboard to give it even more space. I wrote til I stopped. Not because I was finished but because there wasn’t anymore I had; just as the light of the morning was slowly erasing the dark of the night.
I’d looked at what was written there in front of me; I didn’t need to re-read it to know it was a lot. Not a lot in the literal sense of word count, but a lot in the sense that it was a lot. A bit of me was compelled to share it here; I thought maybe it could help someone else. Or, maybe it would just help me? Nonetheless, it was a lot.
I sent it to a close friend; “part of me wants to post it but a bigger part of me thinks maybe not”, I said.
It’s not going to be posted. But, a really good conversation came from it.
In addition to that conversation, the whole thing took me back to a year ago. Maybe more? Whenever that Saturday was; afternoon, mid-conversation, my brother said to me, “you know what your problem is?” “I only have one?”, I replied. “You want to understand everything and you can’t understand everything. You just can’t.”
That wasn’t my favourite thing ever. I told him that the reason I want to understand is because it’s how I learn. It’s how I learn about the person that I am. Your own perspective isn’t the only perspective there is. As important as self-reflection and contemplation are, you just can’t learn everything about yourself from yourself. Understanding how other people interpret you, perceive you, process you, gives another perspective that isn’t yours – that isn’t, inherently biased. Not to mention, understanding brings peace. Well, maybe not necessarily peace always, but it quiets uncertainty.
I took all of this in; the conversation with my friend, the trip down memory lane in what my brother had said – the message, in the here and the now, was to trust and to believe and to forgive.
To trust in yourself, to believe in yourself and to forgive yourself.
Life is fraught with mis-understandings, not-understandings and just plain no-understandings. My unofficial editor-in-chief was right when she told me that what I was allowing to keep me from getting a decent night’s rest the other week wasn’t even anything that was happening now. I was choosing the past. Not the present or the future but the past. I was stuck on understanding what wasn’t even now.
We choose the past a lot. We choose it because it’s an identity of ourselves that we’ve seen. Whether it’s good or not-so-good, it’s already happened. And so, we can believe in that past and that identity because it’s been real, even if only at that point in time. It’s a truth. And, that’s the type of truth our minds seek – a truth that is seen. It’s the truth that we don’t have to create anything of. We don’t have to put our faith in the unknown because it isn’t unknown. We don’t have to find peace with uncertainty because the outcome has happened. It’s all there. And from it, what happens is the past becomes our present becomes, subconsciously and unintentionally, our future. That’s not even to mention the very basic concept of resolution. We believe resolution is forward progress. But really, resolution doesn’t often equate to a solution. Resolutions are about the past. Solutions are for the future.
So, where does this all leave us? Well, right here and right now, I guess. It leaves us with the choice to believe in Love or not. I don’t think everything can ever have a resolution or that everything will be able to be understood, as much as I try to the contrary. Even Love can be this way. But, you choose what matters to you most. You choose to believe in the past or the present or the potential of the future; or, choose to believe in outdated certainty or comforting, yet compromising, pragmatism or the unmapped universe that is Love. If it hasn’t already, it will all come down to Love. I’m not the one that makes that promise. But, that is the promise. There is nothing in life that will move anyone, whether admittedly or not, whether knowingly or not, greater than Love. Just ask yourself: what is ever going to matter more?
Trust in yourself, believe in yourself and forgive yourself. And, at the same time, trust in Love, believe in Love and forgive Love.
Be Love.
