Love
Messy Life
“People
wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any
hope for them.”
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
Virginia Woolf wrote, “A
self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.” As
much as we yearn for life to calm down and be easy for a while, we
are better off facing challenges every day. When life is too
easy—I'm told, though I don't have direct experience of this—we
tend to rest on our laurels and stagnate. And, just as stagnation is
not good for water sources, it is also not good for human beings.
Being unsettled requires
us to get up everyday and work to find solutions. It keeps our minds
busy, and keeps our hands engaged in creative endeavors. A settled
mind is one that is unmotivated to be creative, which may be the reason
that we humans, when life becomes too routine, experience boredom.
And boredom makes us restless, and restlessness unsettles us, and
before you know it, we're up and moving. We have even been known to
make up imaginary scenarios and hypothetical problems to occupy our
minds when we are bored. As a matter of fact, we humans are quite
capable of taking a perfectly placid day and turning it into complete
chaos for no reason other than boredom. You may have experienced
this once or twice—in fact, you may even have participated in it. I
know I have.
In living systems, all
things are in flux at all times. Equilibrium is reached and breached.
Inside and outside, the balancing act is continuous right down to the
microscopic level. Day to day, our environment shifts through the
cycles of seasons; responds to the movement of the sun and moon, and
to the warming and cooling of the seas. Storms come and go, leaving a
trail of destruction behind. Earth shifts on its tectonic plates and
the very ground beneath our feet buckles and cracks, fissures appear
where none were before. Fires blaze, and rivers rise up and flood the
land. All is unsettled, and so are we.
Unfortunately or
fortunately, life is not tranquil. If one is truly alive, one is in
motion, and in constant change. We can make peace with this, or we
can continuously battle against it. Life is crazy, and messy, and
beautiful, and real. If you can embrace change, you will
automatically be in love with life. And that's a very good place to
be.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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