Sometimes it seems that life just keeps giving you the same stuff to work out over and over again. There are several emotional merry-go-rounds that seem to occupy my life.
I have often thought, “not this AGAIN!”
But I am coming to see the message underneath the repetition...again, means that I am getting a new opportunity to work out something familiar in a new manner.
Again, is how athletes become Olympians.
Again, is how we learn to walk.
Again, is how we love...over and over and over.
Again, is how our lives are lived one day at a time.
I do the same things everyday, or almost everyday:
Breathe
Eat
Sleep
Rest
Meditate
Pray
Hike
Write
Give
Receive
Labor
Laugh
Love
Again, and again. For all the days of my life.
Sometimes doing all of the above is amazing. I am present and soaking up the again in every one of those moments.
Then there are days that I am mired in the again. I am overwhelmed and sad and scared and tossed about by the winds of again. Tumbling around in the day like a dried out weed in a Texas windstorm.
Again, is the privilege of life. If we are still here, we get to do it all again. It is a gift of showing us the life that is ours. But that doesn’t mean that sometimes, again, seems like too much.
We can have too much again with:
Loss
Heartbreak
Sadness
Depression
Grief
Illness
COVID
Anger
Resentment
Rage
Death
But as I threw myself a pretty good sized non-COVID pity party the other day about my child and his issues, I got to see the again in a new manner, regardless of whether the again was pleasant or grief strickening...again is just a building block of time stretched across a lifetime...
Again, gives me an opportunity to redo that which did not stay done the time before. I am one of those people who gets their car washed and then is really agitated when it gets dirty five minutes later. I resent the again. I just had it washed, I do not want to have to do it AGAIN!
This is the exact sentiment I was feeling the other day about my son. I did not want to be here with him AGAIN. I wanted someone to give me answers, help and a path forward. And I wanted it to be new and promising. I wanted solutions and resolution...forever.
But that is not life. Life is a series of agains. And here we are dealing with this again with my son. However, I was able to get a new paradigm....we are never really at the same place again. Oh, it may look the same and feel the same but because life is on this forward march to the grave for us all, we are never, ever having the same again, again.
Again is a fiction. Nothing happens exactly the same again. It is always new and fresh and different even if it seems like it is the same. It isn’t...ever.
I am not sure about any of you, but I needed this new way to see my son’s situation. We are NOT here again...we are here with issues that are familiar and trying. We are here seeking new ways to deal with issues that are long standing. We are here right now in a new place with old stuff.
Again means simply that I am moving forward in a theme in my life. Some issue or person that I am being given another go with or at. My most critical mistake has always been failing to see that the again is just a new opportunity to see my life and the lives of others as an opportunity to move forward to a new reality and understanding. Again, is there to teach me new things about old stuff...always.
Earlier this week I felt weary of the again. But today, I see that I am presented with again and that it is really a new opportunity to see something old with new, fresh eyes. Again, perhaps the best teacher I have ever known.
We gain competence by doing things again. We gain insight by learning things again. We gain understanding by reviewing old ideas in new ways again.
Again, as it turns out, doesn’t suck so badly...it is just happening again and that is something to be grateful for and see as an opportunity for change. Because, nothing really ever happens again...again is always new and fresh even if it appears to be the same shit, different day. Again, always brings new life to old stuff. I would even go so far as to insist, that again is here to move us forward through life’s hardest stuff, giving us just enough familiar mixed with just enough newness to not freak us out and not overwhelm. Again, is actually more like a spirograph than a merry-go-round, orbiting off many different centers and not just a stationary pole. Moving us into a kaleidoscope of living, loving and taking it all in again and again and again.
