Life: It’s a Beautiful Thing

I feel life is full of rabbit holes. That might sound negative, but what I mean by this is life is not meant to be smooth all the time. If life was pleasant 24/7, it would be boring, and we wouldn’t enjoy the high times quite as much. Recently, I’ve been down with the flu for a prolonged period, and when I was able to finally go outside and do my own grocery shopping I felt immensely grateful and abundant. I felt happy to be able to do “normal life” again.

When I look back upon my life, I see two major ones among my rabbit holes; the deep kind that take time to recover. They surely weren’t pleasant times, but they were not only times of distress, but of learning, growing and expanding.

Here are some of the insights I gained through my personal rabbit holes:

• It’s okay for me to be negative, whiny, bitter, angry, and bathing in self-pity at times, and express all of that in a proper way. What’s not good for me is to stay in this state forever, because that’s when I allow the negative to overcome me.
• Time is not healing, but healing takes time. And patience. We all heal in layers, no matter what it is we heal from, and what approach we use. It’s just the way nature repairs itself. To know this: that healing takes time, gave me hope in the moments when I considered myself not being far enough down the road of healing.
• Going through my own challenges, especially the bigger ones, made me understand how compassion works. It is our own struggles that make us capable of being understanding and supportive when others go through theirs. When we all try to be compassionate and loving it creates this network of support that we can sustain and rely on at the same time. That’s a beautiful thing.
• No moment is so dark it cannot have any light, even if it is just a flicker of hope. There is joy even in the deepest rabbit hole. It might be that I cannot feel the joy, but I can make myself look in its direction at any moment and trust there will be a day again that I will be able to feel it, too.
• I learned that forgiveness is more for me than for the person who harmed me. If I forgive, I let go of negativity and open myself up to the grace of healing. I think it has to do with letting go of the need to ensure punishment and justice, trusting that life will take care of things without my help.
• The rabbit hole moments have given me the opportunity to question thoughts, opinions, and messages I might have otherwise ignored. They helped me to better see what is important and what is not.
• Knowing I have been through quite some rabbit holes gives me the assurance I can get through the rest of them, too. It’s comforting to know that in the long run I am tough enough for the tough times.
• With each rabbit hole I exit, I am more myself. It’s as if rubbing myself against life and its challenges makes me shed whatever I am not. The most wonderful thing about being myself more is that it always goes hand in hand with loving more, both myself and others.

I am fond of my rabbit holes, not because they were the most fun times of my life, but in a weird way some of my best, and certainly some life changing, experiences. And yet there is this thought: if we didn’t have rabbit holes in order to grow, we would have to learn from joy, not sorrow. An idea I like, but one I am not yet sure how to fully implement in my life.

Written by: Sabine Roggermeier; Gluecklich Im Sein