My day started out by immediately waking and jumping on that downward, spiral slide that takes me to, “this world sucks and it’s all about to blow up in flames.” After an hour of playing on the slide, and some coffee, I finally started to examine the root of my woes. The realization that I finally came to is that, love, in all forms, is a choice.
It’s no surprise, to most of us, that all around the globe, hardships seem more present than ever. To the human eye, nature appears to be angry at us. It seems that most tend to live in a constant state of terror in the face of natural disaster and/or war; California is running out of water, the San Andreas fault could erupt at any moment, glaciers are melting, sea life is dying. Between war and ebola, Africa may be uninhabitable during our lifetime, the list goes on and on… And never mind the more micro concerns of life like, how am I going to afford those ray bans I’ve been wanting for the past year or the homeless man that goes through my trash every night and has to sleep outside in the cold. I’m sorry, but WHAT THE #&%@?!?! And I’m just supposed to wake up and be in a good mood and carry on… let’s go shopping and get drinks, hehe. You can see how the slide is a very attractive place to play…
Recently, for my 29th birthday, I gifted myself the wonderful experience of jumping out of a plane. I was looking for the experience of surrender. I wondered, how could I show my ego that it isn’t superman and in charge of saving the world? Jumping out of a plane seemed like one of the best possible attempts… As I was plummeting toward the ground at 120 mph, I had a moment where I thought to myself, “my life really isn’t in my hands right now, and there isn’t a whole lot I can do about it right this second.” So I surrendered and chose to embrace all of the tumultuous feelings of fear and excitement that I was having and thanked the ground immensely as it welcomed me back to gravity. And I realized, that love is a choice. The truth is, we never know when it’s our turn, our loved ones’ turn, or even humanity’s turn to leave this physical realm. There is always some dangerous, real or imagined, monster named cancer, AIDS, natural disaster, or war lurking in the shadows waiting to get us… So the question remains, will you spend your life loathing and running from these monsters, continuing to count all of the reasons there are to be unhappy or will you start paying attention to all of the reasons there are to love this crazy life?
The answer seems obvious to me…
Shelby Lynn Ash 