Just Reflections

Yeah.

Everything does happen for a reason. We learn from our mistakes. We appreciate life with blessings. We get stronger with trials. We find faith when there's nothing tangible to hold on to. We practice and strengthen our will with all those crucial moments when we need to choose.

But the steady, unbending fact that everything happens for a reason doesn't eliminate bleeding or heal wounds. It just dulls the pain--which is actually mercy enough until you do manage to get scabs. That's life.

Things get broken in this world--both the tangible and intangible things. Glasses break. CD’s break. Teeth break. Bones break. Hearts break. Resolutions break. Everything is prone to ending up in pieces. Both fortunately and unfortunately, no man is an island. Man cannot survive without interaction. Interaction means exposure. Exposure means vulnerability, and vulnerability is a gamble.

In the roads you will walk, what will you find? Or what will find you? Pains or pleasures?

Thus, humans begin to grasp the necessity for trust and faith. We find people whom we can rely on to take care not to break too much of us. We try to find the safest place, where we can live our lives and come out with as many fragments intact as possible. We stick to the ones who will support us, whom we can trust not leave us un-mended, even if we know that they will fracture us at some point or another.

But trust is not exempted from the things that could be broken in this world. There are times when what we hold on suddenly falters or cracks. The shards draw blood, and there’s pain, and it gets hard to grip. Why did it crack? Why did it fail? What did we do differently that triggered it to hurt us? Then we realize we’re stuck in one of those crucial moments when we have to choose whether to hold on or let go. If we choose to let go, we may realize that the loss of something so dearly trusted could hurt like hell. If we choose to hold on, we may realize that the bleeding won’t let up anytime soon, and that it could also hurt like hell. So, which hell will it be? Funny how, either way you choose, you get hurt. Let’s just call it a necessary sacrifice to find the lesser evil. Yep. Sacrifice. It sounds heavy, but usually it just means giving up a few comforts in order to get your life back on track.

Anyway…so we learn to sacrifice. Say, we sacrifice to hold on. We sacrifice several jolts of pain, some bruises, a scar or two, and a good deal of emotional turbulence to retrieve pieces of that thing that we choose to trust again, despite the crack.

As it goes, sacrifice is wholeheartedly given. You don’t put a price on it. You just give, and pray that what you have re-gambled will be valued again, as much, if not more than before. If not, oh well. If it will be, then wonderful. Either way, no regrets.

Everything does happen for a reason, but reasons are both sought and waited for. In life, we need to feel our way through. We need to learn sensitivity to what needs to be said or done, to make things better for ourselves and for others. We learn when to wait, when to fight, and when to sacrifice for the things we want. We begin to see that all the things we desire to keep need to be deserved. They need to be valued. We're all constantly on a proving ground.

Yes. Everything has a reason, and we need to step up in order to find those reasons, or we need to be open in order for those reasons to find us.

Any way you look at it, it's a path of growth--whether you go backward, freeze in place, or move forward is your own call.