in and out

So I met this really cool guy a few nights ago while I was out and about with some of my friends from Naropa. We were surrounded by margaritas and really bad salsa, but the conversation was amazing.

He had traveled out here to go to this Wilderness Therapy Symposium and had met a few of my friends who had also attended the same function. Well through the two of us talking, we both came to the realization that 2008 for us had been fraught with sadness and unfortunate experience. But what was interesting was that our past few months were different in and of themselves.

Unlike me, all of his sadness was coming from within, he had behaved in poor ways which had put suffocated him. He has found himself in unfortunate legal issues that are lingering and he can't seem to close a door because the issues still trail behind him. And it has been this way for months. Even though his sadness came from within and mine came from outside of my internal frame, we shared the same emotional roller coaster.

Well, in the midst of this talk we both shared the feeling of "losing who we really were." He told me that he was scared sometimes because his mind and heart were going very dark places, he found himself less passionate about the things that used to always make him whole. And he was afraid that he would never come back.

I assured him that life is a roller coaster that sends us up and down and terrifies us along the way. If he assumed that we were going to remain mainstream throughout our days with no deviation at all, he was sorely mistaken. I have in the last few years gone dark places, become different versions of myself, found an inability to find joy and been scared just as he was. But I came to an important realization in my processing all of this: I cannot be afraid that the present isn't always how I would like it.

I must hold true to the fact that the more sorrow I can withstand, the more joy I can contain. I must know that my ability to be high and low make me beautiful and I cannot question my sensitive heart. I must see that deviations from the norm aren't permanent, they are our minds way of molding and coping. So I encouraged my friend instead of to be afraid of this state and attempting to push it aside, accept and appreciate it. If you do that, it won't be as severe.