Rebirth

“I’ts always darkest before the dawn” – Florence and the machine

If you could take away any pain you’ve ever experienced; heartbreak or anxiety, would you? This is the question I’ve been asking myself frequently. As anxiety slips it’s way back into the forefront of my mind I am once again forced to confront that maybe our lives were not meant to be simple. That contentedness was not meant to be our ambition. Once again forced to confront what about my life makes the most primal part of me feel uncomfortable and uneasy. What am I telling myself. 

The easy thing would be to wish it away as so many do and have done. To deflect and drink and smoke and forget. I know because I’ve played that part too but when I made the decision to travel alone despite my anxiety I made a bigger choice. That I would choose bravery, that I wouldn’t run or hide anymore. This isn’t really about anxiety anyways. That’s just the name I’ve given to my own demon but the truth is everyone has their own version of it.  Everyone has wounds and over the course of our lives we will be called to them again and again and again, relentlessly. This suffering is not a hindrance to our lives. It is as necessary as love and joy and vitality. It’s where growth and change have the space to happen. Suffering is not something we should avoid but instead something we should embrace. And every time we make the choice to visit these wounds they get smaller and smaller. We have the power to heal ourselves. We only doubt our capability because we’ve never tested it.

You know they say when a baby is being born it cries out because it thinks it’s dying. It’s afraid because it doesn’t know whats happening only to be born into a whole new adventure, one it could never have anticipated. We’re still like that. We hold on desperately to people because we fear the pain of loss. We deflect from our own pain and fear because we can’t yet see what lies beyond it, what great changes it may prompt. We long to stay warm and safe in our bubble forever but that isn’t life. We have a chance to live but in order to take it we have to let go of the idea that it’s going to happen inside our safe cocoon. It seems like it’s the end, but actually it’s the beginning. Don’t be afraid. Come out into the world. It’s time.