The Best Possible Versions of Ourselves

 

If change were easy, everyone would simply do it. It is the exact opposite. It is ugly and messy, like a Joshua Tree bathroom in July; it hurts, deeper than you ever thought possible; it tears at your brain, pulls you down into darkness, and gives you all the easy options for old behavior, like that familiar face on the corner offering you one last hit. The reality of change is terrifying and painful. Quite possibly one of the most difficult things anyone would ever have to do, the most difficult aspect of which is wanting to do it… because this is easy… this is comfortable. This is what I’ve been doing my whole life.

If you can get to the point where you can let go of ego and recognize that you’ve been doing it wrong this whole time, then you can start peeling back the painfully rotted layers of the monsters some of us become. If you are truly open and receptive to it, the universe gives you plenty of help, but not like a passive sign to the right path; it’s usually a horrifically twisted reality that punches you in the face like a freight train. It gets easier with every punch in the face, though. You learn to smile through it. Then you learn to laugh at it and say, “ok, I get it. Thank you.”

Then a kind of excitement builds; a wonder and curiosity of the beautiful world that exists on the other side, after you pull all the broken and jagged puzzle pieces out of the old picture, toss them into oblivion, and wait patiently for the new pieces to fall into place, with bandaged and bloody fingers. Everything happens for a reason, but most can’t see past what they think are rewards or punishments.

An open and receptive mind welcomes all of it, especially the negative, because those are the things which teach us the most, and when you can learn to be grateful for the negatives, you can finally see the positive in them, then everything gradually becomes positive; baby steps become giant leaps as our strength builds.

At the end of this steep and exhausting trail, after all the slides and falls, cuts and bruises, after thinking we’ll never catch our breath again, we will find the best possible version of ourselves, and we all deserve that. Some of us are even lucky enough to have strong and powerful souls around to help us up when we fall flat on our face, and to call us on our bullshit when we want to stay down and give up.