The amount of interesting people I get to talk to, the whole slew of stories I get to hear now, the amount of life that exists around me, truly astounds me. Like, I seriously feel like I’ve been living under a rock for the last several years! When I spoke with my therapist last week, I told him that I’m working on re-framing this catastrophe as an opportunity. And I’ve had so much opportunity come about since finding out about my ex’s infidelity – more so in the last month, especially.
Part of the reason, I think, is that my energy has shifted. I’m in a much different place now than I was in those first few months. The other significant reason is good ol’ social media. Social media gets such a bad rap but it has genuinely helped to give me these opportunities. People complain about it but I have found it to be an incredible asset in my life. It has given me the gift of connection.
For example, I am now going on a solo trip to Greece, on a photography tour, with someone I met through Instagram. He’s an incredible photographer and his pictures made me want to see, with my own eyes, exactly what his lens captured. So, after talking with him for a bit, I decided to go. We have since talked frequently and I’m starting to see him as my friend. He’s such a positive influence in my life and today, he shared a photographer’s perspective about life.
We were chatting about his day and he’d told me it was “pretty awesome.” Well, pretty awesome doesn’t just happen to ordinary days, does it? So I asked him what was so special that had happened to make it “awesome.” His response was so refreshing it made me pause.
He said, “There’s no need for something special to happen to make your day great. You just make it great.”
Huh. Whoa. Okay.
I was blindsided by that response.
And then, duh! It hit me!
So, we continued talking and he told me, “even the routine of your job makes your day a little better.” Routine – something some people, most people, I dare say, complain about. And he finds joy in it. He then mentioned that thoughts become our reality, which I believe, and I think I may have also written about in a previous blog, but now I can’t remember. I responded with, “The world (our own individual reality) is absolutely the way we choose to see it.”
He mentioned that this concept was a secret in photography, too, and I asked him to clarify. He sent the following picture, saying, simply, “It’s all about perspective.”
Uhhh, wow.
How many times do we miss out on something because we refuse to pause and will ourselves to change our perspective? How many times do we respond to something with a knee-jerk reaction, rather than hesitate and practice the pause?
I have intentionally practiced the pause a couple times today. One time, I went ahead with the communication I had written out earlier in the day and felt very comfortable with that decision. The other time, I hesitated long enough to realize I was wrong (yes, that does happen from time to time! *wink*). And I erased it. Shortly after deleting it, I learned that sending it would’ve made me look rather foolish. I learned a great lesson in that last one today. And I am going to start really working hard at practicing the art of hesitation.
Because we can either choose to see the lousy little puddle that is immediately before us, or we can pause, shift our perspective – even slightly, and end up seeing something that instead, reflects the beauty that is all around us.
And make no mistake about this: it is a choice.
We just have to remember to pause, and maybe even shift a bit, in order to find the right view. And when we do, we become fully capable of seeing our reality in a much different light.
Each and every single one of us is carrying around really heavy baggage that weighs us down. That is merely a side effect of living. We are also constantly surrounded by beauty. It’s, at the very least, annoying enough to deal with our burdens. And for so many of us, it’s downright excruciating at times to try to live with the weight of our pain. So why do we also choose to carry it all in a storm?
Let’s collectively practice the pause, take a breath before reacting, and shift our gaze to the beauty that surrounds us. When we make the conscious efforts to focus on the loveliness that exists in our world, life becomes just a bit more fascinating, more opportunities arise, and the baggage actually becomes a smidge lighter to carry.
And you know what? Carrying that baggage while seeing a rainbow is a far more pleasant experience than sloshing around with it in the storm. So, I will *try to* deliberately and willfully wait out the storm so I can focus on the rainbow that I know will eventually appear, after a long enough pause…even if I am only seeing it through the reflection in a puddle that was formed by the storm.
A Graceful Catastrophe 