happiness

Faith Isn’t Supposed to Make Sense.

 

“By striving for a gold medal instead of a tin medal, or for prestige or notice, you ask the world to assess your value before you can value yourself. You place your sense of self-worth in the hands of others. You have no power even if you win every gold medal that the world can produce.” ~ Gary Zukav 

That growing seed of self-doubt that you’re just not good enough and everyone else is making a mockery of your anguish by celebrating without you (or so it seems)… an oh-so-familiar feeling.

Neighborhood games, cliques, exercise, travel, writers’ groups, bridal showers, parties, gatherings and many others that has everyone wrapped up in each other’s sense of belonging.

But you forget that you are, and have been in groups with as few members as two, which inadvertently and even deliberately excluded some and crushed egos like yours. It’s a self perpetuating thought that stings like hundreds of paper cuts when you feel like an outsider.

You’re going to be fine — you know how this goes, the conflicted emotions that come with being left out to dry and somehow, albeit excruciatingly slow at first, you manage to navigate your way  back to that place where you are happy to see others enjoying themselves and even wish them well and quite sincerely. And once again, you rediscover the sheer pleasure of your own company.

When you can move on from being dumped — yes, dumped — and come to terms with how everything happens for a reason, and that there are no magic formulas to relationships except being your truest self and letting chips fall where they may.

And that there is no such thing as novelty of beginnings because if you let it be — yourself and others — the Universe will spin just as it should and not faster than you think, whenever you’re drowning  in deep trepidation and isolation. That the waning is just as intense as the waxing.

The path towards darkness isn’t as short and fast as you might think. It’s when you allow fear to guide your actions that you begin the nosedive degradation into helplessness.

But just because you are here right now doesn’t mean you don’t know or can’t return to the light of healing. And just because it cannot be seen, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Believe this — remind yourself (yet again) — this place is familiar territory.

And it will repeat itself in dizzying succession because you’re human and you have emotions — raw and unprocessed. You will try everything, you will fall in love over and over again. It will never be perfect. And yet you have and will survive each and every single time — smarting, scathed, shattered, maybe not wiser — but you’ve had your practice, and damn me if you say you didn’t so enjoy it while it lasted.

It’s alright, faith isn’t supposed to make sense (most times). It’s meant to carry you through the darkest hours when you feel stripped off, of what little strength and courage you have left. It creeps up on you and carries you forward, a step at a time until, you can believe, again.

Forgive yourself, then others and move right on.

Take everything the same: triumph or defeat, winning or losing, in the company of, and in your sublime aloneness, fame or shame, sadness or gladness. They’re all identical, just cloaked differently. And temporary.

And it’s all going to pass. As if you didn’t know that too yet.

Journey on, and hold that heart of yours sacred. When it breaks, it feels like it’s never going to mend but it always does, scars included.

Kindness is a gift we take delight in giving others. It’s now time to unwrap it for yourself.

***

{Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & Pinterest}

 

Comments

Ruby Bernardo

Ruby Bernardo

Yoga Instructor at Steve Nash
Ruby Bernardo is forever a study in contradiction. An incorrigible optimist, terrified of everything, but she does them anyway. She balances the ethereal and poetic with wealth management consulting and real estate. A workaholic and a decompression junkie, Ruby is a voracious reader but has a ton of books waiting to be read. She stands her ground but surrenders to anything that moves her. She has this deep well of soul-gnawing anguish to write but blames pragmatism for not letting it all out. According to Ruby, “We live but once, no repeats or reruns, so savor and fill each and every waking moment with splendid memories. Happiness is all but a choice, going back in time isn’t.” She lives both in Davao City (Philippines) and Vancouver (Canada). She is a part-time professor of Marketing Management at the Ateneo School of Business and Governance (MBA), entrepreneur (Real Estate investment and development), Licensed Realtor, Marketing and Business Consultant, and a ramp and print ad model on and off since 1989. Ruby got her MBA from the Asian Institute of Management, and is a Yoga practitioner who is currently working to get a Yoga Alliance certification.
Ruby Bernardo
Ruby Bernardo
Ruby Bernardo

Latest posts by Ruby Bernardo (see all)

Ruby Bernardo