Ebb
and Flow
“We have
so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of
relationships. We leap at the flow of the tide and resist in terror
its ebb. We are afraid that it will never return. We insist on
permanency, on duration, on continuity, when the only continuity
possible, in life as in love, is in growth, in fluidity.”
Anne
Morrow Lindbergh (Gifts from the Sea)
Trust is hard to come by,
isn't it? We somehow have the expectation that life moves only in one
direction, even when we experience it's ebb and flow firsthand. When
we're in good times, we want to hang on forever, and when we're going
through bad times, we feel as though all is lost. But nature gives us
models of assurance—the tides rise and fall and rise again, the
moon waxes and wanes and waxes again, the sun rises and sets and rises, the seasons reliably transition
from one to the next. Every living thing under the sun changes.
Our relationships change
as well. Especially, our love relationships. They rise, fiery hot,
they slowly ebb, and at some point, we have to ask ourselves and one
another, “What's next? Will we wax again, will we flow? Can we
accommodate the change and recreate our relationship anew?”
Sometimes we can, and we're off on a new adventure. Sometimes, we
simply cannot. There's no shame in that—we don't have to blame each
other. Our parting can be as amicable or hateful as we choose.
Accepting that all things change comforts us during these
transitions.
It has taken me a
lifetime to learn to trust life's ebb and flow. I don't always
celebrate the changes; sometimes, I rail against the injustices. But
knowing that all things—ALL THINGS—come and go and come again is,
quite simply, reality. It is the nature of living systems. Often, it takes injustice for us to rise up and force change. It lights a bonfire
inside us that cannot be denied. A thirst arises that cannot be quenched. What feels bad,
is often the catalyst for something good. We can trust that.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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