The significance of pain

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

Significant events in my life age me. I’m still young so obviously not physically, but mentally I feel that with every precarious event or trauma I’ve had to wade through there were two options present to me. The first of ignorance, repeating cycles of discontent and mental anguish, pretending as if the pain does not affect me and that I am above it. And the other of facing myself, facing my shadow and the ways that pain had forced me to change even when I didn’t want it; Forced to sit with how my trauma changed how I interact with others and myself, how I’ve become a paranoid person, how I needed to learn to love and forgive myself for actions outside of my control.

Each event settles deep into me and becomes another stone in the river of my life. I come to see the impermanence of most of these things. I may be with anger, depression, and loneliness but it’s never permanent. The seasons of my life come and go. People fall away like leaves, new ones come with new springs, and I change and grow along with all of them.

I used to give and give and give in hopes that the love I have for others would one day be returned to me, but I needed to learn how to give to myself. I needed to learn how to stand firm before I could ever share my fruit.

Every day becomes another cog in the many intertwined stories of creation present within me. A week, a month, a year all go by in a flash, The moment forces me to feel the pain of life but it’s gone as fast as it came.

The pain is what makes life worth living, it sets the base by which the highest joys can be felt.