Throw Your Hands in the Air
I made this post in a playful manner the other day, but I was serious, too.
We get this idea that everyone is supposed to stay in our lives, and that we're a big failure if they leave. That we should have done more, that we could have done more, that we weren't attentive enough, special enough, sexy enough, smart enough, enough enough enough.
Enough.
Because it's just not true.
Every person we meet is not supposed to stay in our lives. Friends come, friends go. Lovers arrive, and lovers depart.
All is not lost, even when someone is lost from your life.
Did you learn a lesson?
Did they learn a lesson? (Your meeting is not always about you.)
Did you enjoy your time?
Did you really appreciate that person and what they brought to your life?
Was it time for her or him or you to move on?
Can you, at the very least, remember some fond moments (or hard-earned lessons) and move on?
There's a lot more that goes into a life than consistency and familiarity.
Now, I'm not one of those "everything happens for a reason" people. I don't think everything happens for a reason. But, I do think that, if we search, we can find reason in what happens. And that reason (real or invented) allows us to move forward.
We are a curious and inquisitive people. We so often want to pore over what happened and, from the ruins, figure out why it happened. And that's okay. Searching for reason in the ruins is a trip most of us take, like emotional archaeologists, sure that we are about to make the "Aha!" discovery of our lives.
Sometimes, this is a fruitful search, and sometimes it's just a waste of fucking time.
I have this friend who says, "The past is shit.”
What she's saying (in an extremely direct way) is that I need to learn my lesson and move forward.
When I linger too long on trying to figure out the reason in whatever past event I'm reviewing like an old movie in my brain, my friend brings me up short with this remark. And it's good that she does. Because there's nothing—absolutely nothing—that I can do about the past. There's nothing you can do about the past. But there is something we all can do about these moments right now.
So, the next time you find yourself lost in "Let's Remember" perhaps you should high five yourself and move on.
Like Marianne Williamson says, "If the train doesn't stop at your station, it's not your train."
Keep your eyes on tracks right in front of you, and your ears open. Throw your hands in the air. There might be a whistle rising through the mountain mist right now.