LIFE HAPPENING IS WHAT HAPPENS

Life is happening...This isn't sometimes, this is always.
Life is always happening, whether we believe it or not. Every moment has a purpose, there is meaning in everything. Sometimes a thing means nothing and sometimes it means everything - then, there is the "in between" to be accounted for as well.
I'm currently reading A.J. Jacobs book, Drop Dead Healthy. I've read his two previous books so I have an idea of his writing style. He continues to amuse and enlighten me. I'm not necessarily on a quest for perfect health but I am beginning to create a new path for physiological health. I've not been taking care of my temple very well. I may have overlooked it while focusing on my mental health, forgetting entirely that everything is interlinked. I am really interested in slowing down and digesting more of life in a moment-by-moment basis. It may sound weird but it's really where I'm at right now. I thought I was getting to the core of understanding humanity but I realized I've missed a big chunk. So finding that chunk is part of why I am reading this particular book at this particular time. Of interest is the importance of nature. "A Nippon Medical School study showed that a two-hour walk in a forest caused a 50% spike in natural killer cells, a powerful immune cell." (p.43) In Japan, they call these types of walks "forest bathing."
Of all the feelings that have swept over me in these wild places of nature, courage and tenderness are what I am most after these days. I want to have the courage to be tender in my everyday life.  
I've got rough edges and I'm no fool to think otherwise. However, in my life now, I have an awareness that enables me to sit comfortably in the contradictions and in the questions. I don't have the answers. I don't want to have the answers. Knowing why life is the way it is is far more responsibility than I want to take on. 
What I know today, thanks mostly to my family, is that love is not meant to protect us. Love is meant to unhinge us from that door that we constantly want to close when others get too close. Love is the everyday, ordinary stuff, with its ups and downs and compromises and shortcomings. I have no idea about the full capacity of love, but for the first time in my life, I understand that love isn't sometimes, it's always, it's in every moment and sometimes completely fills the moment.
Here's the naked truth of love: it's a monster of sorts, it captivates, it heals, it listens, it waits, it possesses in the most freeing way, it generates unbelievable passion and tenderness, it forgives, it abounds, it exposes the darkness, it holds you tenderly, it penetrates to the marrow, it wakes you in the middle of the night just to let you know it's still there.
Love is happening...This isn't sometimes, this is always. 


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