PendulumYou sit, content in your world, smiling at the stillness, the goings on, the peace of it all. You love the way the soft breeze strokes your face in contrast to the heat of the sun and how the cool waves feel caressing your feet once scorched by the summer sand. You will bask in the clear-blueness of the sky above, and relish the security of the firm earth in which you feel deeply rooted.

Then the pendulum swings…

The storm clouds gather all around you as the stillness turns to chaos, the peace turns to rage. The soft breeze becomes a pointed wind now stinging at your skin, and the cool waves become frothy and begin pounding at the foundation of your resolve. You shrink in fear from the darkened skies as you focus on the thunder that breaks your peaceful pose, the sand now shifting beneath feet that once held firm. The undertow grabs at you, threatening to pull you under, and you feel helpless in the midst of nature’s great fury.

You are not helpless. You are not without options. You are a Being of courage and experience.

So, you shift with the sand, shielding your eyes from the grains of sand sent at you like bullets from an unseen gun. You dig your feet in deeper, knowing that time and life has taught you how to float with the currents when they finally pull you out to the unknown sea. You know struggle will only tire you, and you will drown before you regain your strength. So you surrender and vow to ride the current and the storm out for its duration, knowing full well that you were meant to learn something in the experience, and you actually smile in the realization that you are in for one hell of a ride.

Then the pendulum swings again…

You have survived the storm, and have found yourself back on the sand. The place is different, but you will love it just as you have all the other landing spots in your life. You realize you value the storm because it helps you travel to places you would have never seen without it, and because it challenges you in ways nothing else can. Soon, the challenges become easier as you learn to relax in them and learn from them, and you see the storms as great teachers in your life with you the great student. Now, the stillness becomes more profound, the breeze more subtle, the waves a bit gentler. You hold a little less firm to the sand even as you focus a bit more on the moment, and your attention becomes a bit more dedicated to the smile that crests your weary lips.

Someday, you realize, the pendulum will swing again. Maybe that time you will hardly notice, instead seeing its back and forth as nothing more than the human game your soul wants to play. You’ll accept it all, and you’ll love the places you visit and the moments you share without question and without concern. You see suffering as optional, and love as the great hand on which your pendulum swings.

That is, after all, the purpose of the experience. When the pendulum swings you either swing with it or it hits you. It is your choice, your decision, as to which happens throughout. Enjoy your journey, and the powerful being that you are.

“There will be a day when you realize that life does not happen to you, that you happen to life. Then, you will realize everything you ever needed to know.”