Brave Enough To Be Bliss

What if we got it all wrong and we just keep doing it all wrong because that’s how it’s always been, and we are all just too scared to try something new and different and possibly wonderful. Think outside the box. Find a new way of living and loving. Give up control and just be. Accept, appreciate, and enjoy knowing hard times are coming and there’s nothing we can do to stop that but for all the good years there may be a few bad or for all the good months there maybe a few bad or for all the joyful minutes there may be a small percentage of sad ones. It hurts less badly when we are held. It hurts for less time when we are consistently held. When we reach out instead of holing up alone, we get held faster. When we let go of pride and arrogance and ego, we can experience togetherness that helps us through the storm of life. When we are scared, we turn on a light but for that instant when you turn the light off it’s even darker than it was before, and we panic. But the glimmer of light, being able to see through the darkness to that small glimmer of light and hope is all we need to survive that instant of panic. We just have to hold on to the hope it will return and then seek it. Seek the light through the darkness. Look hard. It’s there. Where there is pain there will again be joy. Where there is darkness there will again be light. Hold on, seek it and you will find it. “It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be.” Josh Radnor God didn’t create us to be hurt, but free will gives us choices and oftentimes people choose poorly. I believe it grieves Him deeply to see us hurting, but when we choose to do better than what was done to us, that’s when we connect to our souls, who we were made to be. Our souls are wise and full of love and compassion. Hurt people’s brains , like mine, lead us to protect ourselves at all costs, that’s their job. It’s not wrong, it just is. The pain made us disconnected from the best parts of us because we’ve seen the worst of humanity. I don’t recall which mass tragedy occurred when I wrote this, but that’s the point. There was more than one in the past and there will be more than one in the future if we continue on as we are, so which one specifically inspired this writing doesn’t even matter. Another tragedy today…and yet there are tragedies every day and children are killed one by one, just not at the same time, in the same place so it doesn’t attract media attention. Today’s tragedy will spark debate about gun control, violence, etc. and even tually we’ll know more about the background of the shooter and people will convince themselves whatever was wrong with him is someone else’s problem, but it isn’t. People will think it couldn’t happen to them, not in their neighborhood. Every day we should be appalled at what is happening to children that leads so many of us to a future filled with pain. Maybe not today’s type of pain, but there are so many, many lives that are full of pain and tragedy and it just isn’t reported on the news. It is impossibl e to compare pain. It is ALL awful and sad. Making this into a political debate does nothing to solve the issue. It is our fear that is the problem. If you pull back all the layers and get to the heart of the issue it is the fear that keeps us from talking about the real issues that happen every single day to people of every color, sex, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status. Virtually all children experience some sort of trauma and until we are willing to talk about that, encourage open and honest conversation about the real things that happen every single day, and then do something about it in our own lives, there will be more pain and more suicides and more shootings. It is what happens every day that no one wants to talk about that creates the hurt human beings who end up so ill they want to kill themselves or someone else or both, because they just can’t take the pain anymore and have to do something to someone. Some rage at themselves and some rage at others, but it is the original pain that leads to the rage. The original pain is what we need t o stop and that isn’t a gun control problem. We want an easy answer, a quick fix because then we can have the feeling of control, we all so desperately want instead of doing the hard work on our own hearts and souls that could lead to the transformation of a society, of a planet.

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