No one's life is a smooth path. Instead our lives are bumpy roads with events that range from worst ever to best possible and everything in between. I dreamt about that last night. In the dream a friend was blaming himself for life's tough spots. As I listened to the friend lament, I thought about my own rough spots, and how I too felt guilty about those moments in life thinking I could have done a better job. Yet, as my friend spoke in the dream, I found myself realizing that he truly didn't know any better, and that he could not have avoided those rough spots as he didn't know any better at the time. The events he spoke of were simply the fabric of his life.
Of course there are events in life where we misstep because we don't consult our values well enough and we ignore the warning signs all around us, but there are also many times in life that we feel bad about events that we simply could not avoid because we didn't know any better or we didn't have the tools needed to navigate those events in a better way. Those events are part of the rich weave that is our life-- a weave of warm and cold colors, loose and tight stitches, predictable and unpredictable patterns.
As I assured this friend that the shortcomings he spoke of were not his fault, I found that I was also assuring myself of the same. So many of the lower points in life are simply part of the life we experience, and while tough, these points are also the teachers that spur us to live better lives ahead.
For every bump in the road, I can see a positive lesson, one I took forward to right the road ahead. We don't have a lot of control as to how life's events bump up against one another, yet we do have some control over what we learn from the cacophony of these events.
Life is a bumpy road, a rich fabric of events that affect us in a great variety of ways. These weaves are our stories, ones we need to embrace with as much grace, acceptance, and inspiration as possible. Onward.