the journey of life in a diagram

lately, observing my own stormy weather, i realized that life is just this cycle — the above diagram — repeated over and over again. sometimes in the timescale of a day. sometimes over a month, year, or decades. and as long as we don't get stuck, we will grow and evolve in circles. until we die. (and even death is just a journey into a new place, no?)

if the only constant in life is change, chaos, and unpredictability — then the effort of trying to resist is what causes the most suffering. paralysis is the worst. getting stuck causes suffering — whereas movement through each part of the journey is what allows us to evolve, shed layers, grow.

often times, the only way to move through is to fully surrender to rock bottom. once you've hit the bottom, the only place you can go is up. resilience and the will to survive - is what keeps the forward momentum.

your experience of these places will be very different from mine. but here's my notes from the journey

A - THE EVENT

something happens that throws me off center — could be a drastic change, or simple and small things. it could even be a GOOD thing — like being in love, which makes me so high and so low. introducing: chaos in the ecosystem.

B - THE FALL

I stumble and fall. the fall can happen in a moment, or over the course of weeks and months. it feels like gravity, like losing sense of my own ground, my reality, my internal compass.

C - THE ABYSS

yours might not be so dramatic and extreme, but I experience moments of the abyss all the time. it is dark and cold and lonely in there, and full of sharp objects. if i'm lucky, i'll only skim the surface. other times, I drown.

D - THE CLIMB

eventually, after some time spent in self soothing mode, the will to survive — to live, to make beauty, to grow — gives me the strength to climb out of the abyss. I do re-centering practices for days before I can feel any change.

E - A NEW PLACE

then one day, I wake up and find myself in a new place, with treasures in my hand — of self-understanding, insight, depth, complexity, wisdom, beauty. those only come from the abyss. only from those falls.

…

wait wait you say, why is your view of life so pessimistic, so dark, why does life always have to be about falling into dark holes and climbing out of them?

I beg to differ. once you are unafraid of the fall, of the dark — of even death — then you can live fully alive. fearless.