OtherThanThat

All things happen for a reason.

It’s a phrase bandied about frequently – often when something difficult has happened as a means to help one move through pain or discomfort to a place of reckoning, realization and (hopefully) learning and growth.

When I was 14 years old I was struck with a serious illness. I couldn’t comprehend why such a thing was happening to me. The entire experience led me to reject any belief in any sort of universal power or guidance, any sort of bigger picture energy that directed all. After all, why should a 14-year-old child experience such a horrible thing? It would stand to reason that there was no reason.

I’m glad to report, eventually I was able to see the learning of the experience, to see that it shaped in a monumental way who I am today and the depth to which compassion and gratitude are crucial in one’s life.

But I digress.

Just as things happen in life for a reason, I’ve come to truly believe all paths cross for same. We don’t necessarily get to know what that reason might be. Sometimes the reason isn’t for us but for the other person, or in an even more macro view, sometimes it is the interactions between two people that serves as a lesson for someone else entirely. In other words, not all that happens to me happens for me, sometimes I serve as the conduit for a lesson and other times the converse is true.

All of this comes to mind of late as I ponder some people whose paths have crossed mine. I find myself musing on the meaning of these interactions – in some cases because the people are no longer in my life, in some cases because they are and in some cases because I’m not sure where things stand. In all scenarios I know that there are enormous lessons for me, and hopefully I’ve been an equal messenger for the gift of personal growth.

In one particular case I find myself stretched in alternating feelings of great gratitude and sadness. It’s the not knowing, at times, of things that gets to me … those moments or situations where I find myself wrestling with old behaviors and thinking, knowing they’re false, knowing they’re not true and yet the tapes play so loudly it becomes difficult to hear anything else.

I’m pretty sure that the person about whom I speak in this case doesn’t read my blog, but if you do, know that the conversations we had resonated strongly with me. All the discussions, though over a very brief period of time, float through my mind and into my heart. Though the tape tells me that it was all lies, that I cannot believe what I felt, heard or came to know, the RPMs slow, distorting this old tape and allowing new thinking to rise again to the fore. I hope that our path crossing is not yet complete and that we might share a conversation about these things.

With that, here’s something wrote, inspired by this experience:

As I wended my way home last night, a thought drew my eyes skyward to glimpse the faintest of rainbows in the sky… “Look up,” the quiet voice said. And so casting my glance aloft, the pale span of color smiled at me. And I thought of you.

Rising today, a cascading chorus of birds rousing me from slumber, I stepped outside pulling in the fresh morning air and feeling a sense of peace. The breeze, cool and sweet in the early day’s light, wrapped around me in shades of pink and rose and magenta – colors of you – and again a thought guided my eyes upward…

Not long ago I spoke of a step backwards to allow room for a journey forward. You spoke of taking time, and though since then the distance feels cool and removed, I muse that different people experience time in different ways and as we know each other but a little, I have no way of knowing what’s truly in your heart and mind.

I choose to believe what I felt. I choose to believe all you said. I choose to believe that this merely is a pause. Because I choose to believe that while merely a flash of a moment, that sense of electric flow and knowingness that felt at once new and exciting and familiar and safe, was real, is real and is worth the wait.

I’m also reminded that when a passing thought drifts through my mind, whether of a person or a feeling, listening to the direction never fails to lead to something of beauty.

Here’s to the dawn of a glorious day…may yours be same.