Life is a contact sport, there’s really no way to get through it without injury, and it isn’t something to “get through”, anyway. If you can embrace the experience of learning and growing, life can be piercingly beautiful even when it hurts. We all make mistakes, take a wrong turn here or there, fail to show up the way we’d like to sometimes. Wrong turns aren’t even wrong, unless we’re knowingly hurting someone else, in which case we have to look at when and how we’ve lost respect for ourselves. Short of that, as long as there’s growth, we’re doing it “right”. It’s going to be a total mess sometimes. Did you ever clean out a house or a garage, or even your closet? Sometimes you have to pull everything out so you can see what you’re dealing with; you have to make an even bigger mess so you can start to clean things up. Of course we all have choices we’d love to make over again, and differently; a few things we regret, even if we learned a painful but necessary lesson. This is called being human.

“Paralysis through analysis” is particularly debilitating. Sometimes we come to a fork in the road and we just stop and stare and agonize. Whichever way we look, the paths are painful and full of their own particular thorns; that’s how life can be. This can be the result of making choices and decisions based on what we thought we should do, even if it went against what was in our hearts. It can happen when we’ve been lying to ourselves, denying the reality of a thing, running from it, or numbing it out so the edges blurred enough to make things look okay, when really, they were not. When our actions affect other people, there can be immense temptation to sit with our heads in our hands, and hope something will happen to make the choice clear to us. Maybe someone else will make a move, and then there won’t be a choice anymore, there will just be the one thorny path, and we’ll lament our inaction, because maybe the other road would have been less painful. There’s that saying, “when you don’t know what to do, don’t do anything”, and I can get behind that for awhile, but there’s a difference between taking the time to mindfully consider where you’re at and what next steps make the most sense, and giving up on yourself and your ability to have an impact on the way your life feels and unfolds.

The burden of responsibility can be crushing when a particular course of action may cause pain or anguish for those you love. The thing is, sometimes we just can’t know, and it’s not our job to manage anyone else’s journey. Obviously, you do the very best you can not to hurt other people and to consider the way your actions will impact those you love beyond words, but you can’t serve anyone if you’re allowing your own light to extinguish. What is certain is that we can’t nurture ourselves or anyone else when we feel stuck, trapped, suffocated, or paralyzed by fear or anxiety. All we can do is our very best to move from, and toward love; to take the knowledge we have about ourselves, whatever we’ve learned from past experiences, and information we have about how we’ve landed where we are now, and just put one foot in front of the other, trying to have some faith that we’ll be able to evolve as things around us will also evolve, reminding ourselves that how we feel now is not how we will always feel. Better than letting your choices dwindle, and your faith in yourself diminish. We learn so much about ourselves when we’ve blown it, when we look around and life looks nothing like we wanted it to, or hoped it would. It’s incredibly painful, but it’s also the springboard for change. If what you’ve been doing hasn’t worked out too well, ending up in a ditch might be the thing you need in order to start doing things differently.

You have a finite amount of time. No matter how much you may have blown things so far, until your final exhale it’s never too late to turn it around. Today, you could start searching for those moments of beauty. They exist. You could direct your attention and your energy to every good thing that crosses your path. You could take your good health if you have it, and remember that’s a tremendous gift. You could remember the amazing and beautiful people in your life who love you, and whom you love so much it makes your heart expand just thinking of them. You could remember yourself as a kid with an open heart and recognize that kid still exists. That heart still exists, and you could just begin to show up for yourself and for the people in your life in the best way you know how at this point. That would be huge. You could gather your courage, and start putting one foot in front of the other, and if you step on a thorn, or one is pressed into your side, you could treat yourself with love and compassion.

No one has a crystal ball. There’s no way to make both choices and see which one works out for the best. There are times in life we’re simply flying blind and hoping, but I truly believe if you’re doing your best, you won’t go too far off course. Maybe something totally unexpected will happen, and the direction of your life will shift in ways you can’t imagine. Maybe you’ll look back on this very time in your life with gratitude, even if that seems incomprehensible right now, and maybe you won’t. There are some things that never go in the, “thank you for that experience” file. You are not here to circle around that fork in the road; life is not a relentless traffic circle. Wishing you the strength to choose a road and step onto it with your heart wide open,

Ally Hamilton

If the posts are helpful, you can find my books here <3