Stop Waiting, Start Living: Coming Back To Yourself

The calendar pages flip so rapidly that we blink and suddenly it’s already time to hang up a new one. The hands on the clock move so quickly that it’s merely a blur. 24 hours pass like it’s nothing, then somehow another 365 days are behind us. All we have is time, but make no mistake; time isn’t taking its time with us. Every breath we take is another moment spent, and rarely are we ever conscious of this fact. Life is a series of continuous moments; we may break them up to make sense of them, but that doesn’t change the fact that all that we ever have is the present. Physically, we will never be anywhere other than the here and now. We spend some of the richest days of our lives with our heads in the clouds, our minds elsewhere, not even paying attention to what is right in front of our very eyes. We all look back on the “good old days”, but when we were actually in those “good old days”, our minds were actually jumping to what had happened in the past or what would happen in the future. 

     There are people we will never see again, unless in photographs or by surprise in the supermarket. Yet at one point, they knew us from head to toe, and we loved them wholeheartedly. Never would we have imagined that their time in our lives was something that we would only be able to look back on one day, never being able to relive again. We miss them, and come to understand that we didn’t cherish them enough while they were still an active role in our story. Although they weren’t meant to be a part of it forever, they were integral to our life. Most of the time, when it’s time for a goodbye, we don’t even know that we’re doing it. One day it’s the sound of their laughter filling up the room, and another day, we can’t even recall their voice within our imagination. The photos we used to pose for together become memories that pop up in our Snapchats once each year.

      Photographs have become such a normal part of our lives that we even forget what the real meaning of a photograph is. To take a photograph is to accurately and visually encapsulate a memory because it’s something that we crave to remember for decades to come. They aren’t just for attention, likes, and social media; they are beautiful memorabilia that capture a glimpse in eternity. Photographs are what’s left behind when the time comes that we cease to be. It’s truly the little things in life that hold such powerful meaning. 

     How much time do we spend simply waiting? We are always waiting for something, whether we realize it or not… Waiting for the perfect time, waiting for the perfect job, waiting for the ideal relationship, waiting for the money to come… Until we can allow ourselves to be joyful, free, and to make the most out of life. To wait on a result or specific outcome to be joyful and live life to the fullest, is to waste the gift that the Universe has just handed to us; the now. Our existence is a miracle and we are rattled to our core by the most minor inconveniences. Then, we end up supporting our own narrative that life is nothing but one continuous problem… Because we make it one.

    We drink ethanol, snort powder, and swallow chemicals in capsules because we believe we are lost and cannot find ourselves. This is the equivalent to running around the house looking for our cell phones when it’s actually just been in our hands all along. We just weren’t aware because we were being absent minded. We are trained from the very beginning to believe that we need something we don’t already have to feel whole. We poison ourselves at gatherings just to connect with other people, because on a subconscious level we feel entirely separate and alienated from them, as we feel detached from the Source. Putting down the bottle, keeping our noses clean, and flushing the pills away… We can finally see that they were never giving us anything… They were stealing something that we never even knew we had; our Being, oneness, God. 

    When we see a shooting star, feel the sun beaming off of our skin, or hear the sounds of birds chirping, that is life itself that we are witnessing and experiencing in real time. Soaking in these seemingly insignificant happenings and being totally enveloped in the moment can take us out of our “little me” states, getting us in touch with our true Being instead. There is genuine joy and love to be experienced in life, but it is not something that we just simply stumble across. It’s something that we access within ourselves. Once we access it, we can continue creating it and spreading it to the people that surround us, so that they can see it is within them too. If we can nurture ourselves, we can nurture one another, and that is how our world changes. If we want true spiritual, emotional, and mental growth, we first have to turn within and connect to our Being, God, the Universe, whatever you may interpret this life force as. Life is far too precious to live only in the dark.