Where were you a year ago?

As our first wedding anniversary creeps up, I’ve got nostalgia on the brain. In some ways we’ve come so far from where we were one year ago, and in other ways, it doesn’t seem like much time, does it? A year can go by in a flash. On the flip side, a mere month can drag on. Time is relative depending on what you’re going through. What kind of year has it been for you?

New Beginnings

For me, it’s been a combination of both. Since Jaime and I got married, we bought a house and moved to a totally new town, my grandmother passed, we’ve began to build our suites, I got a job with a cool company, closed out some great freelance projects, still working on my book when I can muster the enthusiasm to, and still learning about what it means to be living where I am right now, here in Bryson City, NC.

It has been a year that feels joyful and purposeful, while really difficult and lost. My year of extremes. I am a tireless chronicler, so I can open my notebooks and look back month-by-month and sometimes when I was really feeling it, week-by-week, at the progress and work that went into everything from relationships to work to creativity to love. This has been a big year of working on myself, and to be honest, I’ve mentioned it here before, the more my awareness grows, the more my list of things to work on does. I get humbler with each and every lesson. I feel younger on my journey and less sure about anything besides this: we should all be really nice to each other.

A Different Way To Be

Ignorance is bliss, I believe that. I used to have convictions that I knew with every fiber of my being… even one year ago, my way could make the world better. Now, i’m not convinced as much about anything. Life feels relative. Besides the fundamental human rights we all have, there is no ideology that I subscribe to. That feels weird to me, for so long I was a person whose sense of self was heavily woven into who I was, what I believed, and in my younger days, what I did. I don’t feel better or worse per say, I’m not sure if this new phase of radical acceptance (or relativism) is a “better” way to be. It’s simply the only way I can be right now.

Relativism doesn’t mean I don’t care. God, at times, I wish it would. I care so much about everything, my own things and the world’s. I suppose i’m simply more open to how we can get there than I was before. I’m skeptical of people who think they know all the answers. How can you? How can any of us?

Trust in yourself & the universe

Trust has come up a lot this year for both of us. Trusting ourselves, trusting others, trusting that life unfolds exactly as it should. Ultimately, I do feel a bigger sense of purpose in the universal balance of life. I do think our actions have a way of balancing themselves out in this delicate ecosystem we’re in. That brings me peace because as long as I do my part, life (God, The Universe, Karma, whatever being, science or logic you subscribe to) will handle the rest. Divine timing is real, but even with this belief, I’ve found myself kicking and screaming, fighting it every step of the way.

We’re constantly at choice is a reasoning I’ve often held onto. Even now, I’m deciding to be sad, or mad, or worried, or not. However, that’s only half true. I don’t think any one of us escapes the array of feelings that encompass our human experience. We’re here, playing the human game whether we like it or not. And the human game is joy, bliss, love, success, connection, gratitude, but it also includes life’s less popular feelings, sadness, insecurity, fear, anger, resentment, jealousy, loss. Because… balance.

This is my reasoning. The ying and yang exists as a logical way for us to make a distinction, how can we know either extreme of happiness and sadness, or good and evil, without experiencing both? We’re here to go through it. I don’t think this is a bad thing, though experiencing bad things is about as fun as a fucking trip to the dentist. I don’t believe we have control over any of our feelings, try telling anyone who’s lost a loved one to choose a different feeling than grief. Once an emotion arises, the only way is through it. Sure, we can navigate whether we wallow or stretch it out, but ultimately, the stories that we make up about our lives is where our choice comes in. That’s where we get to give meaning to the grief making it a part of our hero’s tale in a way that is good (or not, it’s up to you).

Trust In The Divine

Although I seem to have gone off on a tangent, this is what life is like now. A year ago, I was too busy planning and basking in possibilities to think about this perspective. That’s a nice place isn’t it? For me it’s always been great, better in fact sometimes than experiencing the actual thing I’m looking forward to. Not that that was the case for our wedding, but everything in my life right now was only a dream then. It was pure, untouched dream matter and the thoughts of our wedding, our move, our new start, well, it was all visions with a golden filter in my imagination. Right now, life is good. It’s not the rose colored daydream I once had, but it’s good. It’s harder than I thought, for sure, but overall I’m happy with our leap. It’s made our marriage strong, our relationship stronger. Only Jaime and I know the journey we’ve been on, no one else could possibly understand. There’s a lot of power in that kind of love and shared experience. I wish I had more to plan, a trip for just the two of us far away from our day-to-day would be great to have. It sounds crazy, we see so much of each other, why would we need a vacation just the two of us? Well, because we’ve been engrossed in our transition. Taking time and space to get away does so much. It clears our mind but also helps put home in perspective, traveling somewhere else gives us a bird’s eye view of our life, a renewed golden filter if you will. Life can feel like the stuff of dreams once more.

Where were you one year ago? How does this year feel for you?