Iām just going to be straight up here:Ā
I honestly have no idea how to start this post. But I know what I want to say.
And itās weird. I just wrote something on Instagram, and it flew right out of me.
But suddenly I donāt know how to interact on here. Because this spaceāmy home for the past seven yearsāis suddenly unfamiliar. Itās changed now.
Like walking into a party where I donāt know anyone. And suddenly Iām awkward. And I donāt know how to express myself. But it seems so intuitive in my head. Or when Iām with a close friend.
Itās kind of like that.
I donāt know if thereās a more painful feeling than to be a stranger in your own life.
And the irony is Iāve spent so much time being a stranger in mine. Being a person I didnāt quite recognize. Living a physical life that just didnāt match the mental picture in my dreams.
And, boy, did I want to dream.
As a young kid, Iād sneak downstairs to the family computer. And Iād be more likely looking up ancient Egyptian magic and witchcraft than I would any dirty movies.
Iād read Harry Potter. And write my own stories. And just imagine a world that was a little bit different than this one.
It was fun. Enticing. A diversion to imagine possibilities greater than my mundane life.
Because what I really wanted was to disassociate. Like diversion, to āturn awayā from life as is. To play with crystals and magic and pendulums as some kind of āsupernaturalā fun.
Like those things were somehow different from this relationship challenge. Or this fight with a friend. Or this struggle to have enough money. Or this deep-rooted trauma. Or the question of what to do with my life.
Fragmented. A rich world of wonder. And an abandoned physical reality.
No wonder I felt like a stranger in my own life.
And my solution to the hardest parts of my life was to always to imagine a different possibility. But never take the painful steps to ground that possibility into my current reality.
So, like a lot of people, spirituality and life purpose was a diversion. Something you could focus on when things were going well enough and you had the resources.
But the moment actual crisis hit, you had to drop it to get back to āreal life.ā Because there was somehow a fragmentation between the two.
I saw life purpose as the cherry-on-top. But never the foundation.
Truthfully, Iām not as interested in any diversions these days. Iām not interested in distracting myself or disassociating from the challenges in my life and our world.
And today there are many.
No matter what we are facing in lifeāno matter which challenges we encounterāif our work doesnāt help us face that moment successfully, then it isnāt actually purpose work.
I want work that makes me dive deeper into myself and the world around me. Empowering me with the tools to stay present, even when itās so fucking hard and scary. And ultimately using those lived experiences as the fodder to understand myself deeper.
To connect the dots. See the invisible thread of magic between the mundane and the painful.
And not have to keep leaving to find magic. Because thereās a lot more fucking magic in whatās real.
Love is magic. Friendship is magic. Laughter and joy and purpose and pain are all magic.
Real life is way more magical if we see the invisible threads that connect it all.
Not magic as a diversion. The magic that brings us deeper into our lives. Empowered to become more of ourselves.
And, no matter how much I teach this to others, Iām constantly finding how much deeper I can go with healing those dichotomies and diversions myself.
Because weāre always cycling deeper. Weāre always spiraling further. Weāre always seeing what we werenāt quite ready to see in ourselves before.
In this momentāas the world feels overwhelming and intense and sometimes even unbearableāwe donāt need diversion. We need empowerment. We need understanding. We need ways to bring the future possibilities into this present moment.
And hold steady. When itās hard. When itās scary. When we arenāt sure exactly what we can do.
Because the thing about being āall over the placeā is that thereās a common denominator to all the places that weāve been. And thatās us.
We are the constant in the chaos of our lives.
Weāre the connecting thread that makes every moment of our lives make sense.
And all we have to do is map those seemingly disparate lived experiences to discover ourselves beneath it all.
Understanding and becoming ourselves is the most magical adventure we will ever embark on. It will take us much further into the darkness and shadows and miracles and wonder than our wildest dreams ever could.
The most magical life is one thatās real. And one thatās oursāall of oursāwithout splitting ourselves up or abandoning parts of ourselves. Without any disassociation or diversion.