Lately I’ve been experiencing the duality of life – Love and loss, full and empty, open and closed, summer and winter, birth and death.
All around us there are opposites that complete the other half of an experience.
This natural order to things can feel foreign to me at times.
Part of me wants all love and no loss. All summer and no winter. All birth and no death.
Why do we fear these other sides?
We seem to have lost the ability to see the darker colors in life, and still find them beautiful.
We run from the parts of ourselves that are afraid, and soft, and vulnerable. We look in those inner rooms of ourselves, pronounce them unattractive, and shut the doors tight.
But these are the places that make us human.
These are the places asking for witnessing and openness rather than shunning and abhorrence.
Everything dies one day. Nothing lives forever.
It is in the embracing of your vulnerable parts – the fear of loss, the longing to be seen and loved, the ache of seeking validation that you are enough – that you become whole and stop running from your humanness.
Then you become round and full. Able to hold the dark with the light, the sunrises and the sunsets, the inhalations and the exhalations, the births and the deaths.
The answer is not to run away and escape, but to stay, open your eyes wide, breathe deep, and allow all of it to be what it is.
Light and dark. Soft and hard. High and low.
Human.