A babbling brook
Note to the reader: This was written as an authentic stream of consciousness. Written in about 30 minutes with minor edits, the final product is intentionally riddled with symbolism and meant to leave the reader with room for interpretation.
As the summer winds down to a close, one cannot help but feel romantic about the changing seasons. When I look at the leaves flutter in the wind, I see myself floating in the water looking up at the clouds and wondering who envies who more. The clouds pass on, carried by the winds that they cannot control. They glow with envy at the humans below who are self-aware of their own agency. Humans spend their whole lives trying to realize what they already know or run away from it so that they can avoid accountability in their own lives. When the clouds’ envy grows into anger, their tears and tantrums manifest themselves in the form of thunder and rain, which reminds the small sentient beings below that their agency is limited. Limited by their physical reality and terminated over the course of time. The seasons change. People change. Things change. Whether we want them to or not, the world spins around and even if we hold on and choose to maintain our position against the will of time and nature, our relationships relative to the people and things around us will constantly change. An object in motion will continue to be in motion unless met by an equal and opposite force. In any case, this stream of consciousness is beginning to meander. Like a real body of water in motion, we can attribute the movement of the flow to be random or to have meaning. These letters, which become words, that morph into sentences, and then are translated into thoughts are all up to interpretation as to which point in the stream do these twists and turns occur. At what point does the river become a lake, and a lake the ocean? In reality, these differences are negligible as they are just distinctions that help us organize the world around us. The same goes for the changing seasons and the changes in our lives. We slice and dice it up so that it makes sense because the reality is that whether we choose to or not, we are constantly in motion.
All things considered, if things will always be changing, then it is incumbent upon all of us to shape this change within ourselves and throughout the world around us. This is something that I had abandoned for a period of time in my life. When things got tough, the tough got going and I did not. I decided to forgo my role and responsibility not only to the world but also to myself. I blamed everything around me for where I had been and I felt like a prisoner in my own body, mind, and in this world. I was a secondary character in a world filled with first characters. I began to feel that I was becoming unstuck from reality. Actions no longer resulted in their anticipated outcomes. The relationship between input and output seemed to be a moot point. But one way or another, something changes. It always does. In the darkness, lights begin to appear. Because as I stated before, even if we choose to sit in darkness and try to embrace it, the world around us continues to change. Other people who have found their way through the darkness will always appear as they too are also, always in motion. The choice is then ours to pull one’s self out of the darkness and yell for help. This can be in the form of Family. Friends. A life partner. Colleagues. Pets. Therapy. Teammates. Work. Hobbies. And more. At some point, you have to make the choice not only to follow the light but to pull yourself out of the darkness. Many people only do the first part while they, unfortunately, continue to carry the darkness with them as they move forward in life.
The point here is that no matter how much we want to run away from ourselves and our lives, there will always be chances for us to change things. The door is always open. But, many of us walk through that door and cling onto the closest thing we see when we enter back into the light. We forget how we ended up in the darkroom and continue to carry on those experiences that haunted us, the bad habits that plague us, and the insecurities that cripple us. The hard part isn’t seeing the light. The hard part is the willingness to reach inside oneself and pull out the darkness. Sit there. Be honest with it. Talk to others. Understand that there is always some darkness in this world in the form of misfortune and tragedy that we cannot always control. But also be open to accepting our own culpability in the darkness we have created within ourselves. Doing this is not easy and it certainly leaves me feeling vulnerable. And with that, we return to those who provide light in our life. There will always be others who will be there for you in your moments of vulnerability and those who stick around are the ones worth keeping. Reach deep within yourself to pull out that darkness and reach out to those who provide light in your life and you can get through it. If we are all just constantly in motion, we might as well find others who are moving in the same direction as us and grow together.