This morning it dawned on me how much of life is about skipping parts of it.

Have you ever thought about that?

There’s so much thinking about surviving this moment, eagerly looking forward to the future, leaving this behind, or forgetting it.

When we feel we’re in a bad place people will tell us that one day it will be over and done, and that’s where hope slides in.

Or we hear that we can expect ‘good things to happen’, or ‘a miracle is waiting around the corner’.

I totally get the dynamics of this tendency, but I also see that it’s so much about not wanting to be here, now.

Straight in the miracle that is already there, constantly.

It seems that a big part of our lives is lived in a vacuum that’s mostly about getting away from it, and making it part of the past.

Imagine the irony: really wanting to feel good again but always waiting for the right moment, and by doing so fucking it up!

This is not meant to be a prescription or approach to life, at all: this is purely an observation that feels like an opportunity.

The observation simply tells me we’re throwing away buckets of precious life in search of the next phase of relief.

Of course, in reality, you can’t mess up life, not really.

It happens the way it happens.

But part of that happening is the incredible power of insight, where wisdom nudges you, seemingly changing the course of life.

When I reflected on the months and months of utter resistance I went through in my life, both despising and fearing every second of what was going on and wishing for the unburdened future, I could see how off I really was.

How insulting, actually.

If feeling lost and sad and frustrated is regarded as bad and unwanted, we dismiss and ruin an important part of life.

We don’t stick with what is, whatever that is, but are mostly occupied with the future moment when it will be over again and the dust has settled.

I get it, I really get it, but it also feels like we’re missing part of the real miracle.

We’re overlooking a big part of THIS, this everything, the whole show, containing every tear, every sigh, and every bit of darkness.

Our preferences chop up life and make us hate the pieces we don’t like.

And we dismiss them.

So in a way, we live less.

Isn’t that a sad waste of being alive?

What if we could bring as much appreciation to the ‘wrong’ moments as to the perfect ones?

What if we can relax SO deeply, that even the most fucked up parts of the story feel welcome?

This is most definitely not something I’ve mastered.

I’m not bringing you the key.

But it starts by seeing the lock.

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(Photo by @saffu, for Unsplash)