Why The Hardest Moments in Our Lives are the Greatest Moments in our Lives.

I recently had a very close relationship of mine break down rather unexpectedly. The results of this breakdown were confusion, nihilism, pain, bursts of random euphoria and a numbness that promised to comfort me if I called it home. My inner world seemed laden with these memories that threatened to send me spiraling into some sort of heartache-depression, leaving me disillusioned with love or even life itself.

But then I began to think about the possibilities that lie in the pain and loneliness. These two concepts: pain and loneliness, somehow seem like things destined to kick us down and keep us in the dirt. But I also think that in life these two things can be gifts.

I found that over some time now I may not have been paying much attention to my inner life. I neglected my writing, I disregarded the inner world of spirit and consciousness and I chose to focus on the things that were physical: my body, the job, my significant other. I found myself  empty or even self-negating and with these new gifts of pain and loneliness I was offered a chance to enter into  a state of deep reflection.

In the Catholic tradition they have a period called Lent, which is a solemn period of forty days and nights that is taken out of the year to deeply contemplate one's personal life and also the suffering and sacrifices of Jesus as he underwent temptation and trials in the desert. In a similar way, I have entered my own Lentern period. Delving deep within myself and washing my inner world with words, art, and  meaningful connections to people.

This is no easy thing to do. With a heavy heart one takes a brave step each day and one tries to recreate oneself anew, to recapture a lust for life by reminding oneself about the infinite possibilities of life, even if those possibilities seem far away or even invisible at the moment.

In life we will face disease, money problems, relationship problems and various other struggles that promise to hold us down and beat us till we black and blue. But what if in our moments of immense struggle we decided to celebrate our pain, celebrate our strife and our struggle. What if we took hold of all those pent up traumatic emotions and actually held them up to our faces and examined them with a kind and gentle heart. Would we then be able to see ourselves anew and orientate  ourselves afresh to the ego within: an ego that constantly undergoes evolution.

The hardest moments in our lives are the greatest because there are no rules to them, the possibilities are endless and limited to our own creative might. Those moments that leave us in ruin, or that take us out into the wilderness do so in order to show us a new path, a new way to rebuild and a fresh way to journey and wander through the world.

We have a choice when it comes to the hard times in life. We can either let them debilitate us or we can let them reinvigorate us. So I have decided to sit in my own ruin and listen to the stories that the rubble has to whisper to me. I will cry, I will feel anger and then finally I will stand up and walk out into the wilderness to begin the journey of a thousand miles once again.