The Phoenix

Both as a species and as individuals we humans are remarkable. We are resilient beyond our own expectations. Sometimes beyond what we even desire.

How often do we feel tired beyond belief? Utterly exhausted? Maybe it’s only physical, but sometimes emotional and spiritual tiredness pile on top of that. Then it is pretty clear what feels like our best relief.

Sheet therapy.

To stay hidden under the covers. In bed. Without anybody in the world intruding on our lives. No one telling us to get up and get moving.

Does it ever cross other people’s minds that we don’t care to hear their opinions? We’re not interested in what they have to say. We feel like we have come to the end of our paths. There isn’t enough chocolate cake in the world to drown out our sorrows.

Without reason something shifts. There is a slight movement within us. Totally inexplicable. Enough to make a difference.

It isn’t necessary for any human being on the face of the earth to have anything to do with the shift. All we know is that we feel differently about ourselves and our lives.

We may have felt like an absolute atheist about everything. Not just in God, but in ourselves, each other, anything that could possibly be worth our consideration.

The paradox of life turns us into feeling as if life has more options. An interior spiritual shift leads us to care more about ourselves and life in general. Nothing fancy happens. We’re not suddenly levitating with Teresa of Avila while we cook omelets.

Successfully making an omelet can be miracle enough.

All we know — all we need to know — is that there has been an interior shift. A movement deep within. It is enough.

This shift is most recognizable when we have felt completely and utterly adrift in life. Where previously we felt unloved and unlovable, we feel the merest glimmerings of possibilities. Of, dare I say it, hope.

Sometimes the worst of all four letter words and sometimes the best, hope leads us to where we’re supposed to be in life. Regardless of what our heads tell us. No matter what we are told by the world’s greatest experts.

The one thing that all great experts forget is that the person who is the greatest experts in us each is the individual person. Great expert theories are all well and good, but so what? We are the ones who must ultimately make our own life decisions. Neither praise nor blame rests on ether’s shoulders.

Our souls regenerate.

There has been a metamorphosis.

We have been transformed from whoever we used to be to the person we now are. That transformation may last a minute or an hour. Eventually, we will undergo another shift in being. And another. And another.

There is no logic to the fact that all of our lives we change from one moment to the next. No human logic. Nothing that fits in a neat little box.

Several years ago, when it became popular to tell people to think outside the box, I asked what box. I’ve never stopped asking. We are only boxed in when we choose to be.

Humans have an extraordinary capability. When devastated by something in our lives, we have the ability to rise from the ashes of our own destruction.

We rise out of the flames because we are meant to go on. As individuals and as a species we are destined to grow above and beyond where we were. Where we thought we would finish as going concerns. It isn’t good enough that we were who we were. We were born to be more, bigger and better than we ever conceptualize.

The impression it’s all to easy to surmise from the world around us is that we are sitting in the middle of the apocalypse. Which is a very silly idea. Yes, there are world leaders who stupidly run amok attempting to amass more lands and money and hegemony.

What utter fools!

Regardless how long they live or the destruction they create, they live in the fires they lit for themselves. And not just world leaders. Anybody who, like them, heedlessly rushes to the top of the heap. Somewhere along the line those men and women forget themselves. Forget how terribly small they are in the eternal scheme of things.

They become their own ash heap by losing sight of what truly matters. Why they were born. The reason for their existence.

Our personal willingness to rise out of the ashes of any situation in life makes the miracle of our existence explode with possibilities. We never run out of possibilities. Hope, humility and our personal humanity are ever before our eyes.

Life requires our willingness to release the darkness from our lives, to live humbly with the courage to face the day.

Life is full of possibilities when we are willing to be reborn as better persons.