If there's one thing that is very certain throughout our lives, it is that we are constantly surrounded by the chaos and order of change. Isn't it funny that when finally things seem to fall in place - new things are arriving at the horizon to humble your very self? That when it can't be getting any worse, somehow things change for the better? I sometimes have to get really angry with life, getting at an age where you begin to talk to yourself and you'll get more annoyed. And yet, movement no matter how small, is the catalyst of change. Things falling into place is also movement and so is slamming your fist on a surface because you simply have enough!
My life, for the short 36 years that I've been here, has been a rollercoaster of happenings. Being a rebel teen, running away from home, feeling misunderstood all the time, not knowing that I barely knew myself was a perfect - albeit very hard to swallow sometimes - shaper of my life. I don't easily give up, I go through fire to make things work and yet I can also let things go their way and not interfere - just float.
Yet, sometimes, with all the responsibility as an adult, it just happens that changes feel like they should be resisted, quareled and fought against. In some cases, yeah some action is required, but the older I get the more I accept and try to flow along so I can change and adjust where the resistance doesn't come up like a big wall. This is not to say that I let things happen because it's easier to just ignore. Injustice should be called out, racism, discrimination, genocides. It should be called out loud and clear, a resistance where each voice is atributing to the change of a better world for those who come after.
It's planting trees, bigger and mightier than the ones they cut, it's cleaning the water, because you realize the blessing of having a well with drinking water. It's planting new life into the earth to make up for the senseless destruction elsewhere. And yet! It is also accepting that winds and storms can be destructive and thus making it feel sometimes like your work is for nothing.
That is the ebb and flow of life. How friendships blossom and wither away because over time we change, our convictions harder, soften, our view of life changes as we grow more experienced.
I find it difficult though. I'm in my thirties but I don't feel like it and yet I'm definitely not mentally in my twenties or teens either. I don't feel I'm approaching middle age, yet I'm not feeling like a maiden or a (young) mother as I did some years ago. Definitely not the wise crone either, I still do stupid shit sometimes, but I learn :-P, maybe I'll embrace the crone in a year or 10.
But what I'm trying to say is that there's a structure in change and that it usually brings us closer to where we need to go. We're still in control over our destinies and yet sometimes it feels that my destiny is trying real hard to get my attention. Philosophical this is a rabbit hole worth talking and investigating with a glass of mead, a campfire and blackbirds singing for the evening about to fall.
Traveling to Ireland with my family and another couple of days in the Netherlands made the come back a bit harder than I anticipated. Much has changed for Siren and with Helisir falling away and me basically retiring from what I've been doing for years has been a bit of a pill to swallow. Although it feels right, it also doesn't. Changes for Siren require me to be more strict and less the I-want-to-help-everyone, because unfortunately a lot of the everyone is going to screw you over. Let's be realistic, in this individualistic society everyone is competing with eachother and in stricter economic times, people have to make hard adjustments on their spending.
Going from 2 weeks of utter bliss, nature and being with my family - not a care in the world but finding old ruins and forests to explore, back to reality where people seem to be struggling more and more - is a bit of a fall one might say. So I'm taking it slow, one breath at a time, gazing at the pictures of the wonderful places we visited and resuming my studies. Change will always surround us, it will be there when we so dearly wish for it and when we wish things could remain perfect forever in that split second of bliss.
Learning how to be carried on that ebb and flow might just be a life long quest.
Lene
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