I’m just going to be straight up here:
I honestly have no idea how to start this post. But I know what I want to say.
And it’s weird. I just wrote something on Instagram, and it flew right out of me.
But suddenly I don’t know how to interact on here. Because this space—my home for the past seven years—is suddenly unfamiliar. It’s changed now.
Like walking into a party where I don’t know anyone. And suddenly I’m awkward. And I don’t know how to express myself. But it seems so intuitive in my head. Or when I’m with a close friend.
It’s kind of like that.
I don’t know if there’s a more painful feeling than to be a stranger in your own life.
And the irony is I’ve spent so much time being a stranger in mine. Being a person I didn’t quite recognize. Living a physical life that just didn’t match the mental picture in my dreams.
And, boy, did I want to dream.
As a young kid, I’d sneak downstairs to the family computer. And I’d be more likely looking up ancient Egyptian magic and witchcraft than I would any dirty movies.
I’d 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 “turn away” from life as is. To play with crystals and magic and pendulums as some kind of ‘supernatural’ 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 ‘real life.’ Because there was somehow a fragmentation between the two.
I saw life purpose as the cherry-on-top. But never the foundation.
Truthfully, I’m not as interested in any diversions these days. I’m 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 life—no matter which challenges we encounter—if our work doesn’t help us face that moment successfully, then it isn’t 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 it’s 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 there’s a lot more fucking magic in what’s 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, I’m constantly finding how much deeper I can go with healing those dichotomies and diversions myself.
Because we’re always cycling deeper. We’re always spiraling further. We’re always seeing what we weren’t quite ready to see in ourselves before.
In this moment—as the world feels overwhelming and intense and sometimes even unbearable—we don’t need diversion. We need empowerment. We need understanding. We need ways to bring the future possibilities into this present moment.
And hold steady. When it’s hard. When it’s scary. When we aren’t sure exactly what we can do.
Because the thing about being ‘all over the place’ is that there’s a common denominator to all the places that we’ve been. And that’s us.
We are the constant in the chaos of our lives.
We’re 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 that’s real. And one that’s ours—all of ours—without splitting ourselves up or abandoning parts of ourselves. Without any disassociation or diversion.
